"IMMIGRATION OF CHINESE LABOURERS AND SERVANTS."

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 762, 3 August 1853, Page 3

"IMMIGRATION OF CHINESE LABOURERS AND SERVANTS."

The appearance of a Prospectus with this heading in the advertising columns of the late Wellington papers, authenticated by the signatures of four members of the mercantile community at Wellington, has struck us with an astonishment rapidly followed by a feeling of indignation which we have no wish either to conceal or to qualify. The proposal to which these gentlemen invite tisc assent and co-operation of the colonists is that, forthwith, two hundred and fifty Cbiiiftse labourers should be brought into New Zealand by the aid of a deposit of 57. ftr each, to be lodged in the Union Bank of Australia, by persons desiring to secure their services for "from five to seven years," at : > "very moderate rate of wages;"—the Prospect being held out that at a future period "an immigration to this country of Munese labourers and servants will be main-

mined spontaneously at the cost of the emigrants."

Seldom lias the mammon-worship of the age assumed a form more daring than this attempt to pollute a country so peculiarly j circumstanced as New Zealand by the sysI tern a tic introduction of a mass of pagan idulalors, whose presence, especially am ngst our Native population, would 100 probably be fraught with evils of the most ruinous ! character. In Australia the experiment has been tried under circumstances of less peril, and the results—both to the wretched immigrants themselves, and to society (so far as their influence could afTect it),—have been disastrous in a manner and to an extent which no attentive reader of the Australian journals can have failed to observe. As regards the Chinese "servants,' 1 they have been in reality slaves, treated in many instances in a way thut convicts would not have endured, and that almost irresistibly recalls some of the scenes depicted in Mrs. Beecher Slowe's thrilling delineations of American slavery ; while, on the other hand, the so-called " immigrants"—who have been generally the most debased sweepings of the Chinese sea ports —have shown themselves brutally vicious, indulging habitually in the vilest pollutions, and doing so almost without a consciousness of the moral degradation in which they were sunk. If it were not that the nature of the subject forbids our enlarging upon it, we could adduce ample evidences of the truth of this remark, from the reports of the criminal Courts, and other statements in the Australian journals. We shall content ourselves with quoting one passage, couched in very general terms, but sufficiently suggestive—taken from an article in the Wellington Spectator having reference to this reckless scheme : "For what are these Chinese, that we should seek for any of them here? Sunk in the lowest pagan idolatry, taking pleasure and wallowing by hiibit in vices at wheh humanity shudders, and of which it is a shame even to speak, they would bring into this country all the worst horrors of transportation, and where they congregated would form a community compared to which Norfolk Island was pious and moral. Think 100 of the aboriginal race of this country, brought into contact with the celestials; think of missionary labour thrown away, of all efforts for the amelioration of the native tribes made futile; above all (for why refrain from referring to this?) think of letting loose thousands of men among a race where the numbers of the sexes arc already so disproportionate ; and of the inevitable bloodshed and strife !"

In New Zealand we have loudly joined in the protest against Transportation, yet here is a deliberate proposition, originating in a part of our own colony, to systematise an importation of less reclainuible and even more grossly and stolidly depraved labourers! It must excite painfully marked attention that Canterbury should be prominent in such an undertaking. The projectors of it have one office at Wellington for the reception of applications for ' k Chinese servants," and another at Lytielton ; and the Prospectus informs the public that, of the firs; 250 " at least half will be specially engaged for settlers at Canterbury." Well may the journal from which we have just quoted ask, Is it possible that the Canterbury pilgrims, the founders of the most moral and religious settlement, are Ihe eager i romolers of such a scheme? that into a settlement under (he patronage of Ihe Archbishop of Canterbury and half the prelates of England, heathen slaves arc to he shovelled, one of the deliberate conditions being, thai they arc to return heathens to their country in a few years, and a chief inducement and subject of congratulation that it is happily impossible to convert them to Christianity, eleven to leach them Ihe alphabet ? Verily, this is Church Colonisation with a vengeance !

We earnestly hope,' however, that the scheme will be "met by a hostility from those who prize the morality, the honour, and the real welfare of the country, which will speedily and finally frown it down. Let these speculators follow out their plan for intercourse with China "for the purposes of trade," and we wish them every success in all their fair commercial pursuits; but let them not stain the character of a colony which has hitherto held out as one of it most attractive inducements to respectable immigrants that it has never been tainted with convictism, by intermingling with its population the class of heathen slaves which this scheme would but too certainly land on our shores, and the existence of which in New Zealand might exert a more repulsive power on thousands of minds than would even an announcement that this had been made a penal colony. True, the project is confined to the Southern settlements ; in the Province of Auckland we have nothing to do with it but to repudiate and condemn it. This, however, we feel it both our duty and our interest to do—and to do emphatically.