TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE HILL COOLIES AND THE GLENELG ORDER IN COUNCIL.

A GREAT deal has been said of late on this subject, both in Parlia- ment and in the newspapers, and generally with most astounding ignorance. We shall endeavour briefly to state the real facts of the case.

The planters of Trinidad, Jamaica, and Demerara—the only British sugar colonies in which there are few labourers and plenty of good land—are alive to the high wages which, under such cir- cumstances, they will inevitably have to pay, in the culture and manufacture of sugar, when the apprentice system shall have ter- minated and labour is free. That labour will be scarce and high- priced in the colonies in question, we have no snore doubt than we have that it is so in Ohio, or Michigan, or Illinois ; and pay- ing the natural price for it which must be paid, we have just as little doubt that the West India planters, contending now on equal terms with the produce of the East Indies, will not be able to maintain their monopoly of the English minket. This is a result not at all to be regretted; for it is what the labourer has a right to expect, what will be highly beneficial to the consumer in this country, and what the planter has already been well paid for in the lumping bonus of twenty millions. Of this consequence the planters are themselves fully aware; for they are beating about in all directions for emigrants that will keep down the price of labour and enable them to carry on their business on the old terms. From Africa they may not have them. They have tried emigration from Germany and from Ireland ; but this, of course, has failed. Europeans cannot live and labour in tropical swamps, under a vertical sun, and with the thermometer at 90 degrees. Well- peopled Hindostun then occurs to them; and a great Tory planter of Guiana,* who has pocketed 120,0001. from the slave compensa- tion fund, applies for an Order in Council for permission to trans- plant " Hill Coolies" to the swamps of Demerara ; %%hit+ Lord GLENELG, in an evil hour, contrives to obtain for him,—taking care, however, that the order in question should not be duly published in the Gazette.

But what is meant by the mysterious term a "Hill Cooly t" It really means nothing more or less than "a highland labourer." It is true that the word "cooly," in the parent language from which it is derived, meant "a slave ;" but it now means only a common day-labourer, a porter, or a carrier—in short, an unskilled labourer. But what class of mountaineers is alluded to ? In the wide extent !" India, there are hill districts East, West,

North, South, I Central, inhabited by a great diversity of races,—all of .0 more poor, ignorant, and unenterprising,

without an exception, than the inhabitants of the plains. Some one or other of these must be the parties that our humane sugar- planters are for placing in the marshes of Guiana,—if indeed, They have not adopted the term "Hill Cooly" only to mystify the British public, by giving them to understand that the labour- ers they would select are confined to the most hardy of the Indian people.

The inhabitants of the hills in India have an antipathy to the plains, and those of the plains to the hills. Neither can enjoy health by exchanging residence. The people of the hills pine and perish in the plains, and those of the plains sicken in the hills,—which are, for the most part, highly prejudicial to the health of strangers. We conjecture that the mountaineers on whorls the sugar-planters have set their hearts are the people of the district of Rainghur, the most Northern portion of the pro- vince of Behar, and lying contiguous to that of Bengal. If it be not this portion of India, we know of no other likely to furnish any considerable supply of labourers. Now, the district in ques- tion contains above 22,000 square miles, and about 2,200,000 inhabitants. In other words, it is as extensive as Scotland ; and has about 100 inhabitants to the square mile, while particular dis- tricts of the neighbouring plain contain from 250 up 10600. The poverty of the soil accounts, to a certain degree, for this compa- rative paucity of population; but still, much of the available land issin a Vete of wild forest ; and the country, therefore, in reference b its capacity, is under-peopled. The people are ignorant and lawless beyond any others in the same part of India, and indeed are proverbial for these qualities. The proportion of Hindoos to

Mahomedans is as 30 to 1 while throughout India it is as but 6 SO 1, and indeed, in some of the maritime districts, the proport..ons are equal. Now as the Mahoinedans will emigrate, and ti e

Bindoos, with rare exceptions confined to the inhabitants of the coast, will not, it follows that there is not a spot in India from which emigration (crimping and kidnapping excluded) is less likely. In Ramghur, thew is a considerable burly of slaves, a class of persons nearly extinct in all the civilized pm Cons of the Bengal presidency. The inhabitants show the usual feebleness of constitution which characterizes those of Bengal and Behar. Such is the country, and such the people, from which the West India planters propose to draw a supply of labour to be sub- stituted for African slave labour. Now, the people of India gene-

s•There is no need to be squeamish about mentioning the name of the sue. eessful applicant for the Order in Council, tar it was mentioned over and over again in both Houses of Parliament. The patty is Mr. Jots GLAnsrot4E, a great East and West India merchant oF Liverpool, a great proprietor of Deme- rara, laird of Faskali in Scotland, and father to Sir Rune or Peres Under Secretary for the Colonies—a gentleman who may be in the same position six months hence, or for that matter in a higher. rally, as already said, with the exception of' a few Mahorredao, the coast, have a mortal aversion to sea voyages and to enligrati° - The Hindoos, besides the ordinary prejudice of other Indians a kind of religious horror of it; and, as a term to express' the; aversion.call the ocean the " black water." They are consequently seldom found beyond the limits of their own country at all • ana in the few exceptions, their emigration has been by land. l3ainish.

ment is to them, in fact, a severer punishment than to any People alive, and often thought worse than death itself. They will eat no food dressed on board of ship, and seldom, indeed, will cook even in their own beats on the Ganges. It was only within the last forty years that our Sepoys were induced—and this with great dim. eulty and much management—to engage in our foreign military

expeditions; and the most distant ever attempted was that to Egypt. In such cases, their water must be shipped under the direction of the Brahmins; and as they will not wash when on board of ship, nor in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred touch animal food of any sort, a wretched vegetable preparation, oft hich it would be impossible to preserve their healths for a pro. tracted voyage, is laid in for them as a sea stock.

Let us suppose, however, that the labourers of Ramghur are in- duced to perform a voyage to Guiana. The journey from Ramghur to Calcutta, which is about one hundred and fifty miles distant,

may be performed in about fifteen days. A hundred miles nsee will give the emigrant the first sight of the sea which he everhaa

in his life; and a voyage of some 14,000 miles snore will land him, if' he survive the trial, on the shores of Guiana—on land of which he and his countrymen bad no more conception than of a region in the moon. When he lands, he will be wholly igno. rant of the language, customs, and manners of every hu- man being around him — of those of his employer, overseer, or driver. Every object of the very nature around him will be strange. He will have neither rice nor millet to live on,--for these are dainties that a West India planter cannot afford to his labourer ; but in lieu thereof, boiled plaintains, which he never tasted before. Then, he will be wholly ignorant of the culture of the cane and the manufacture of sugar; for these are unknown

to his native country. He will know as little of the cultivation of coffee, and nearly as little of that of cotton. All we can say, then,

is, that if a five months' voyage, strange and unwholesome food, novel and hard lahour,and novelty of position, do not soon kill him outright, he is no Hindoo. But on what authority is it presumed that a supply of voluntary Indian labourers of any sort is to be had for the West Indies, and above all of "hull labourers?" Has any one ever heard that the people of Ramghur are accuslomed to emigrate from their own half-peopled district, even in the limited meaning in which the Irish emigrate to Britain ? Nothing of the kind is known : in the labour-market of Calcutta, to which the more industrious in- habitants of the plains are in the habit of resorting, from distances of four or five hundred miles, no mountaineer of Ramghur is to

be found. Our Eastern settlements near the Equator, which are of the character of colonies, contain no hill labourers, and few

emigrants from Bengal of any description : they are furnished

with labour by races far superior in physical strength, hardihood, and intelligence, to the very best of the inhabitants of Bengal— by the maritime inhabitants of the Coromandel coast, but still more by the Chinese, one of whom is worth three Indian moantaineers.

The West India planters expect cheap labour from India. These sound reasoners argue, that because the Indian works for 2d. a day in his own populous and cheap cenntry, he will do the same thing in our under-peopled and dear West India colonies. They might just as well insist, that because water freezes for nine months of the year in Batlin's Bay, it must of necessity do the same timing on the Mosquito shore. In such countries as Guiana, Trinidad, and Jamaica, low-priced labour (always supposing it to be free labour) is a thing economi- cally impossible. If the labour then be not, in one shape or ano- ther, compulsory, the scheme will be abortive. The plan, as we understand it, is that the planter conveys the labourer to the West Indies, and at the expiration of a five years' engagement, sends him back with a free passage. The two voyages, including acci- dents and detentions, will certainly take up an entire year; during which, while he pays for him, the planter of course has no use of his apprentice,—to say nothing of the mortality in the first voyage, which will still further enhance the price of his ex- pected cheap labour. The Indian Hill Cooly, when he reaches his destination, if he get the natural wages of labour, will be highly paid, and which payment will not remunerate the planter for bringing him. In the Indian colonial establishments near the Equator, already alluded to, and which is the only case that can be produced in illustration, the Indian day-labourer, being a native of the maritime coast of the peninsula, and not of Bengal, who comes to them at his own expense, receives about a shilling a day, or six times as much as he receives in his own country; and the Chinese labourer of the same descrip- tion, a far better man, nearly is. 6d. Bread-corn is about twice

th Vet Indies price in those settlements that it is in India ; in the s

Indies it will be at least four times as high ; and the labourer s wages must bear some proportion. If the planter, therefore, pay the natural and necessary price for labour, be will he ruined, or, at the very best, gain nothing by his speculation ; and if he do not, the work must be exacted by the coercion of Colsmal laws and the cart-whip, and the "flee hill labourer" becomes a virtual

slave. Under some construction of the contract, something of this sort must be intended,or the planter—which is not very likely when his own interest is concerned—is out of his wits. There is no escaping from this dilemma. The scheme is either a fraud or a delusion. But the plan of employing " Hill Coolies," it is sold, has worked well for some years in the Mauritius. Some Indian labourers have been sent to the Mauritius, no doubt ; and, short as is the voyage, it has been accompanied by a frightful mortality among the emigrants. But, supposing the most complete suc- cess, the cases are any thing but parallel. The voyage to the Mauritius, instead of being five months, is but one: the climate, instead of being bad, is very good; and instead of there being rib rice, or none cheap enough for the labeurer's use, it is both abundant and cheap, the Mauritius being supplied with this necessary from Bengal. Moreover, there are in the Mauritius even Europeans acquainted with the language and usages of the labourers, and a considerable number of Indians permanently settled there for half a century back. If the West Indian planters aro really anxious for a supply of free labourers, let them go to China for them ; where they are to be had for asking. There are at present probably not fewer than a million of Chinese settlers in the various under-peopled countries in the neighbourhood of that empire. These men are more laborious and intelligent, and of far hardier constitutions, than any class of Indians, and especially than the Indians of Bengal. But then, they are not so simple as to work for less than their labour is worth, and will insist on its full value. We think it necessary, however, to remind our benevolent planters, that the experiment was tried about thirty years ago, and then failed. About three hundred Chinese labourers were sent to Trinidad. The planters wished them to work on their terms; but the Chinese said—" No; give us what our labour is worth, or give us waste land, which we will cleat and cultivate on our own account :" the parties not agreeing, the Chinese had to be sent back to their own country.

The inferences we draw from the facts now stated are—that if labourers can be had at all from India, they will only be ob- tained by crimping, kidnapping, and delusion ; that in the voyage, some twenty or thirty per cent. of the whole will perish, from unaccustomed fowl, hardship, and natural feebleness of con- stitution ; that from unsuitable food, and bad climate, still more will perish on the spot—that not one in a hundred will ever return to his native country ; that if the plan shall answer the planters' purpose, it will amount to slavery in a very hideous shape, and if it do not, it will amount to a most wanton waste of human life. Such is the precious scheme of the Tory planters of Guiana, which has received the sanction of the religion* but thoughtless Colonial Office. Lord BROUGHAM did not exaggerate, but rather uederrated, the evils which will inevitably flow from it.