DOES ENGLAND OWN INDIA?

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 6 April 1901, Page 4

DOES ENGLAND OWN INDIA?

An Important Question Suggested by King Edward’s Letter. The King’s eloquent letter to the princes and people of India (says tho “ Daily Mail ”), again suggests a question to which mil'ions of people have but one unhesitating answer. Although India is commonly spoken of as belonging to England, there arc several parts of the great dependency in which Jung Edward’s message will have no personal meaning. For those who answer the question propounded above with a “Yes” would be (piitc wrong. We do not own India. AVc only own a part of India. For instance, the Portuguese flag flies over Goa, a territory sixty miles long by thirty miles broad, and having an area of over a thousand square miles and a population exceeding half a million, Damaun to the North of Bombay, with 384 square miles and between sixty and seventy thousand inhabitants, is also theirs; together with Diu, a town and fort, both built principally of mud, and situated on an Island off tho Guzerat coast. Tno whole of these territories, however imposing though they appear on paper, do not contain more than a very few thousand native Portuguese, while their trade could easily bo put in tho shade by any one at least half a dozen Calcutta firms.

The French flag, again, floats over Pondicherry, on the Coromandel coast, a fertile strip of country with an area of a trifle over one hundred square miles ; and, in addition, she owns Chandernagore, on the banks of thoHoughly, seventeen miles north of Calcutta, with an area of four square miles all told; Karikal, a small and swampy settlement in tho Cauvery delta ; Yanaon, near the month of the Godavery River : and Mahee, a small town on the opposite coast of India, with a population of about Ten Thousand Souls.

True, France may not fortify any of these “possessions.’’ Neither may she keep there any soldiers beyond what aie required fer police purposes. But, for all that, they arc as much her property as arc Algiers or Tunis. Within their borders French law reigns supreme, French money circulates, French weights and measures are in use, and to a great extent the French language is spoken. Nor is India the only portion of England’s dominions within whose confines the French flag is flown. Most people, if questioned oil-hand, will say that the British possessions in North America include tho whole of the northern portion of that continent, excepting Alaska, together with the adjacent islands. In this they will be wrong again, for the tri-colour flies to this very day over the islets of St. Pierra and Miquelon in tho Gulf of St. Lawerenec. The combined area of these two tin v dependencies is only about ninety square miles, and the population all told is barely seven thousand ; but St. Pierre, at all events, is pretty. Strongly Fortified. and might easily prove a vertiblo thorn in our side in case of war. Quito recently, too, another small isl-.nd in this locality has b een purchased by a French subject ; but this, of course, gives France no claim whatever to officially occupy it.