THE SOUTH SEA OUTRAGES.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3170, 26 August 1881, Page 3

THE SOUTH SEA OUTRAGES.

In a leading article on the South Soas, the Times remarks :—" In all that region, while Nature is beautiful, man, 'in a certain sense, is not vile, for he is a very precious article. You enter your country, or your archipelago, whichever it may be, and can make no use of it. The climate and the soil are alike genial, but there are not the multitudes that fight elsewhere for bogs, for hill-sides, and for the very stones to make their bread. Our own colonists in Queensland are at their wits' end for tho stout limbs there necessary to fulfil the proud boast of universal production. Had Queensland but men enough, it would be independent of all the world. T>abor, however, is not to be got, except at great cost, and, what is moro, thero are restrictions carefully guarding the liberty of the laborer. If this be the hard caso of a great continent, much more is it in groups of islands separated by great breadths of rolling waters. Man is the one thing wanted in the Pacific, and he will he more wanted, for the native races are

dwindling away, blasted by the hot breath of European civilisation. The result is that which political economy invests with the constancy of Natir-o's own laws. Where tbere is a demand there will bo a supply; and, as tho demand increases in urgency, the supply will, in that proportion, overcome obstacles and disregard scruples. Traffic in human flesh „nd blood, obtained by fair means or by foul, now prevails over that fair region ; and tho Pacific is disgrace,d by the worst of quarrels—that between the kidnapper and his victim. It is not alleged—and we/ear that numerous instances on undoubted record would stand in the way—that the French colonists of New Caledonia have the monoply of this crime. Their difficulties are great, for they cannot help being somewhat dissociated from the great English communities almost engrossing that part of the world ; and they do not appear able to obtain labour from home as readily as our colonists do. In this extremity it is evident that they have become the greatest and most obstinate offenders, by dealing with the masters of labour vessels without inquiring into their practices. Till lately, possibly till now, these men have exercised to the full their vast superiority in ships, arms, and cunning over the simple and naked savages, running down their canoes, enticing them on board, or terrifying them into surrender. Rapidly borne away hundreds of miles from their own people, tho poor creatures are helpless—helpless even to complain. The natives, suddenly and cruelly robbed of husbands, brothers, sons, some slain, some carried into distant slavery, have an indiscriminate quarrel with the white man, whom they naturally infer to be all of one tribe, the wickedest in the world. Harbouring their revenge, whether for weeks or for years, they wreak it on the next party of white men approaching their shores. They then commit massacres, very atrocious in our eyes, but the natural result of that ignorance which places them so much at our mercy. Then ensues what one of our correspondents intimates is the worst folly in tho whole series. One of Her Majesty's cruisers goes to the island where such an act of blind retaliation lias taken place and commits another act of retaliation just as blind, and quite as certain not to be forgotten in a hurry. The cruiser takes a safe position, shells the villiage, sends a party ashore, cuts down the cocoanut trees, burns the huts, and so deprives some score of families of their simple and scant food and housing. Woe to the next white face coming that way. It is evident that even after the native ignorance has been somewhat removed, and when they have fully realised that there are good whites as well as bad whites, or, as some would express it, white angles as well as white devils, thoy yet can make mistakes in the hurry of the moment. The French authorities are said to be doing their best, if not to stop the labour trade, to bring it under good regulation. It is suggested that a labour vessel ought always to carry a responsible officer charged to protect the interest of the poor savages accepting the offer of employment— that is, to see that no fraud or violence is employed, and that they know pretty well what they are about. Few people, however, rre protected by others as honestly and as successfully as they can protect themselves, if tolerably competent. It would be very desirable to educate a number of these natives, and make them the medium of communication with the Europeans. It does not appear to be suggested that the rnisssionaries, who know the people and their languages, would be ready to assist in bringing them to the place where their labour is wanted. They might have their own reasons against it, and it certainly is not their busine9. But it nevertheless, is very conceivable that some of these islanders might be really better placed in the service of a colonial gentleman, assisted by responsible managers, than in the very precarious condition and baneful custom of native society. The first condition of peace, humanity, and justice is tho widest possible spread of information, especially on the points directly at issue between the white and the coloured man. The white man has something to learn as well as the coloured. He has to learn, and he often does not know it, that even a naked savage has rights, against which it is possible to commit great crimes. At the distance of the whole world, some may think this is a mere platitude, as if any one could really regard human beings of any kind as no better than brute creatures. Unhappily, even good men, whose vocation has brought them among these poor creatures, confess the difficulty they have in realising that they are beings of our order, fellow men and women. It is not only the color, which is something in the way, but it is the gross and simple animalism of the savage, that seems to constitute him a different kind of being, that never can be brought to the same level. When the Spartans allowed no rights to the Helots, ifc is no wonder the whites have often to be taught that there is duty owing even to blacks. That is one of the things we have to do in those wild and scattered regions, and if there ever was an occasion in which the humanising of the savage, and the drawing of the white heart to the black, would have its interest and its reward, certainly ifc is in the necessary and increasing connection of the Australian continent with its countless family of oceanic dependencies.