The Heathen Chinese

Feilding Star, Volume IX, Issue 119, 8 May 1888, Page 2

The Heathen Chinese

.». The New Zealand Government have decided to follow the lead of the Victorian Government, and declare all the Chinese ports infected so that passengers from them will have to be quarantined. This is another instance of what is called "panic legislation." The people in New South Walos, Victoria, and Queensland have suddenly been inspired with a dreadful terror that the Chinese intend to come m masses to either absorb or starve out the unfortunate whites in those colonies. New Zealand has now caught the infection, and those unfortunate Celestials who have taken ship to come to this colony under the Chinese Immigration Act, of 1881, which provides that vessels may carry Chinese passengers in the proportion of one to every ten tons of tho tonnage of such -vessels, -with a penalty not exceeding £10 for each Chinese passenger carried in excess, are to be virtually imprisoned. Not only them, but the officers, crews of the ships, and other persons, not being Chinese, who may be passengers in good faith, and necessarily in ignorance of the new course taken by Ministers. We are perfectly willing- that the immigration of Chinese should be kept at the lowest limit, but think it should be dor.c legitimately and in a spirit of strict -justice. There is no earthly use in New Zealanders giving way to childish alarm just because it suits a few persons m the other colonies to get up a cry against the Chinese for political purposes.