Mr. Balfour's speech may have been a good one from
the exclusively Parliamentary standpoint. Judged by the standard of the reader, it was singularly unconvincing. His best point— but it was little more than a debating point—was that you could not condemn the Chinese Ordinance, under which the labourers are to live in compounds, without condemning indentured labour such as exists in Guiana to-day, where the labourer must live on his employer's premises. " Call them premises, it is free- dom. Call them compounds, it is slavery." Of course, the answer to this quip is that we do not object to indentured /abour such as is sanctioned and supervised by the Indian Government, because there the labourer has his interests pro- tected by the whole weight of a powerful and vigilant Govern- ment which is quite independent of the employer and the importer, and is determined to see that they treat the labourer well. We object, among other reasons, to Chinese indentured labour because the labourer will have no such complete protection, and the traffic, instead of being in the hands of a Government solicitous in a special degree for the welfare of the indentured labourer, will be at first in the hands of private individuals, and only supervised after the recruiting has taken place by Government officials. To expect a Government so corrupt and inefficient as the Chinese to protect the labourer adequately is absurd.
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