Mr. Lyttelton, speaking at Leamington on Thursday night, delivered a
long apologia for Chinese labour. The arguments were mostly familiar,—the shortage of native labour which threatened a financial crisis after the war ; the alleged fact that an enormous majority of the white inhabitants of the Transvaal favoured the measure ; the acquiescence of Het yolk; the analogy and justification afforded by the employ- ment of indentured labour in British Guiana, Trinidad, and many other places ; above all, the practical impossibility of vetoing a law passed by the people of the Transvaal themselves. Mr. Lyttelton also declared that the Ordinance had led to an increase of white labour, and, through the importation of machinery from this country, had increased the profits of em- ployers and added to the employment of workmen. He also stated that statistics showed that the amount of desertions and serious crime among the coolies only reached a fractional percentage.
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