The Evening Star SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1872.

Evening Star, Issue 2814, 24 February 1872, Page 2

The Evening Star SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1872.

The murder of Bishop Patteson has forced the Polynesian labor question upon public attention in its most revolting aspect, and the ruffianly letter published in the columns of our contemporary, giving details of the slave trade in Fiji, confirms the worst accounts that have been given of it. The letter we allude to appeared in the Daily Times of Thursday, and the flippant manner in which the traffic in human beings is spoken of, reminds one of the worst features of slavery in the West Indies or in the Southern States of Republican America. We trust there is not a man in Dunedin who can read without indignation, such evidence of a brutalised mind as is displayed in the following extract from that letter :

By-tlie-bye, we have had some great doctoring here, with one Tanna man. One beggar died (£lO gone), and two or three mire were bad, so we thought a dose of “painkiller,” with ago d dose of chlorodyne, an I then a rattling good shock of the galvanic battery. (No humbugging.) We pulled the thing out as far as we could, and then turned the handle as fast as possible. You should have seen the niggers twisting and screeching; it has done them good though, the beggars are all at work again, with the exception of one. This fellow complains of his head, so I am gmug to give him a good shock on the nut to-night; this will waken him. Pretty rough doctoring this, you will say ; but if you did not give it to them hot and strong, they would all take to their beds, aud how would the work be done ?

These poor creatures, thus spoken of with no more respect to our common humanity, than if they were dogs, had been purchased by this ribbald cottonplanter for ten pounds a-head. But our readers will best understand the matter from the writer’s own description of this nefarious bargain. lie writes as follows; — Now the first thing to be done was to see what niggers were for sale, and hearing that a cutter had come in from Tanna with 25 men, also the Waumi, from Solomon Islands, with 80, we started oil' to have a look at them. First, we boarded the Wainui, and had an inspection of all the men. I did not fancy them, as there were a lot of old men, and some very thin small bovs, not .an even lot at all. You could have drafted out about 40 good men, but this the captain objected to, so you had to take a cut of them just as they came. We next went on board the cutter to have a look at the lanna men, and a line lot of young fellows they were, with the exception of one man who had been very ill with dysentery, and who was so weak that he could not stand. I would never have believed so thin a man could live. Now we went on shore to find the agent, aud see how much he wanted for the niggers on board the cutter, £l2, says he ; so I told him to keep them till they g t fat. He says, what wi 1 you give ? says I, £lO ; so after this style of thing for about two hours, we bought them for £lO each—he sticking out for gold on the beach ; no truck with kites on Sydney. We also bought the dysentery nig. for a liver, with the proviso that if the beggar died he was to give us a sound man on our next trip, on our paying another five pounds. Whatever doubts may have existed previously, it is very plain that not only in Queensland but in Fiji, shivery as an institution is taking root; and, more disgraceful still, the perpetrators of this iniquity are British subjects, supposed to hare British feelings and religion. We do not think that a single apologist can be found outside those countries for employing slave

labor. There are those who attempt to excuse it by asserting that these South Sea Islanders have a right to make arrangements to sell their labor to the best advantage. No doubt were the bargain truly for labor and its reward, there might be some coloring for the argument J but how does that agree with the seeing “ What niggers were “ for sale." There is no stipulation on the part of the buccaneer captain that these men shall serve for a given time on condition of receiving rations, and for such-and-such wages payable weekly, monthly, or annually. Not a word about wages at all. They are examined with as much care as to their bones, muscles, and ability to work, as if they were beasts of burden. “ There were “ a lot of old men, and some very small “ thin boys —not an even lot at all.” Just the style in which our squatters in Otago speak about their sheep ; and when we read it, the conviction is forced upon one’s mind that the man who could write in such a style concerning human beings, would just as remorselessly let them die when no longer of use, as he would send to the butcher a draught of worn-out ewes. Perhaps it may be said by some that British constitutions could not endure labor in such climates, and therefore acclimatised men are necessary to successful cultivation of the soil. This may be true, but who asked British Colonists to go thither 1 Or if in the exercise of their undoubted liberty of action they chose to go, who authorised them to invest their money in an unlawful traffic, to the disgrace of every man who has British blood in his veins'! It is not even pretended that the British in Fiji could not secure Fijian labor : but for that, if free, they must pay. The disgrace to our nationality is that these poor islanders, obtained no one knows how, excepting the Captain and crew of the Wainui and the cutter from Tanna, will be compelled to labor—by what means heaven only knows; that they will receive no wages, but merely be treated as beasts of burden, to be fed, clad, physicked, so long as they are useful; and that, without fault of their own, they are treated by their brutalised masters as King Cakobaij treats his rebel subjects, whom he degrades by sending them to work in the plantations for live years as a punishment. Perhaps some may imagine that we are not materially interested in protesting against this abuse of knowledge and civilised power, and that it is a mere question of sentimentalism. Were this true, our duty as one of the community of nations is plain ; but it is not true. We, in New Zealand, are very materially interested in the question, as will be shown : of that anon.