ANTI-CHINESE MOVEMENT IN WELLINGTON.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 828, 9 December 1878, Page 2

ANTI-CHINESE MOVEMENT IN WELLINGTON.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) Wellington, December 7.

A Committee has been formed to organise an anti-Chinese movement in Wellington. A requisition, which was numerously and influentially signed, asked the Mayor to convene a public meeting on the subject, and Mr. Dransfield (the Mayor) has consented to do so, and suggests Monday or Tuesday week as the suitable day. On Monday next a meeting will be held to arrange the preliminaries. A draft petition has been drawn up, which sets out that petitioners firmly believe that the empire of China, possessing four hundred millions, is able, and will most certainly send, if permitted, during the next few years many millions of a most servile and otherwise objectionable class of immigrants to these colonies, who, on account of their cheap means of living, will to a great extent supplant our people in all departments of labor where they are physically able to compete with" us ; that the Chinese immigration to these colonies is almost equivalent to slavery, and in some respects i 3 worse than the Coolie labor system in tropical colonies (which has often been objected to in the British Parliament) ; that it is much more objectionable, as the Coolie trade is usually under the immediate supervision of British officials, whereas the Chinese-Australian immigrants are entirely under the rule of their native head men, both on the passage and for years after their arrival in the colonies. Reference was then made to the exclusive trading of the Chinese and to the fact that as soon as they make money they leave the Colony. It is also urged that they on their arrival in China purchase for a term of years a vast number of their countrymen in order to send them to the colonies, and that, in all probability, they will continue to do so until your honorable House and other similar assemblies enact laws to prevent the total swamping of the white race with barbarous serfs." Allusion is then made to the danger to passengers involved in allowing Chinamen to be sailors, and also to tho baneful effects arising from the immorality of the race as proved to exist in the cities of population on the Australian Continent. It is further alleged that nearly thirty years' experience has proved that the Chinese are not capable of understanding our political institutions, and cannot therefore be trusted with political power, and for that reason are undesirable colonists. The petition then urges that a tax per head should be placed on all subjects of the Emperor of China coming here.