The Feilding Star. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1892. Slavery in the Pacific

Feilding Star, Volume XIII, Issue 98, 16 February 1892, Page 2

The Feilding Star. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1892. Slavery in the Pacific

The sugar trade is a very important factor in commerce, therefore the cultivation of the sugar cane is also of importance. In this connection we learn from Brisbane that O'ir Samuel Griffith has issued a manifesto in which he says there is no alternative but to resume Polynesian immigration to Queensland for a few years, otherwise the industry may be extinguished altogether. It is strange how history repeats itself. This fear of " extinguishing a trade" was the basis of the arguments advanced by the opponents to the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies, and other ooloniee, for which Wilberforce and Buxton fought so hard, and so well. Human blood must be shed that people maj eat sugar. We haye said before and we will continue to say that so-called " Polynesian immigration " is neither more nor less than slavery and slave dealing, and therefore it encourages a traffic in human flesh which is repulsive to all rightthinking men who recognise that a man, whether white or colored, should be a free agent whereever the sale of his labour is concerned. The horrors of the slave trade, whether in the interior or on the coast of Africa, have been depicted a thousand times. Many valuable English lives and much English money have been sacrificed in its suppression (within certain prescribed degrees of latitude) while the whole civilised world has expressed sorrow for the sufferings of the unfortunates, and deep hatred of *' man's inhumanity to man " who, for the sake of money-making, will perpetrate the meanest and the greatest of crimes against his fellow man. Yet in this alleged enlightened nineteenth century, we find a politician, holding high office in an English colony, advocating what is neither more nor less than the establishment of the slave trade under the English flag. For the honour of the Australian colonies of which Queensland is a part, we hope this iniquitous " manifesto " will prove ineffectual, and that the cultivation of what is, after all, but a mere article of luxury, will not "be encouraged" by the sacrifice of human lives.