South Canterbury Times, MONDAY, MAY 23, 1881.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2549, 23 May 1881, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, MONDAY, MAY 23, 1881.

There will be a fight in the House of Representatives on the Bill for the restriction of Chinese Immigration. The Government has promised such a measure, and as it is one which will not involve a party question, the Ministry may be expected to keep its word. We are not aware of the opinion of each individual member of the Cabinet on this subject, but would not he surprised to hear of a division in the camp. In such case the measure to be brought forward will most likely be of a lame and impotent nature, satisfying neither one side nor the other. The Chinese influx a few years ago was regarded as a democratic bugbear—a creation of impending evil in the mind of the working man. It bore the semblance of this every whore. In Calfornia, Australia, and New Zealand it was regarded as a question of competition of labor, and as employers arc a numerous and powerful class, they succeeded in shelving, or rather stifling, the agitation. Opposition to Chinese immigration was looked upon as a craze of the “ great unwashed.” However, a most remarkable change has taken place in the views of the more affluent classes during the past few years. New Zealand is only one corner of the world which is threatened to he “ ruined by Chinese cheap labor.” California was the first to feel the disease in an acute form. The capitalists of the Pacific Coast had strenuously and bitterly set their faces against anything which would interfere with the natural law of supply and demand. It is only very recently that people began to question the teachings of the political and social economists. If their doctrines did not form an exact science, were they not based on the inexorable logic of figures ? Sentiment was altogether left out of the question. The first thing which awoke the merchants and capitalists of San Francisco to a true conception of the Mongolian competition was the enormous depreciation in value of property in the Golden City. Fifty per cent represented the decline which followed the Chinese influx. Almost at a bound the subject presented itself in a different aspect. It was no longer a question of capital and labor. The Chinese merchant had entered the domain of the Caucasian. The former’s wants were few, and he required no costly palace wherein to transact ordinary mercantile business—no thousands of his capital were sunk in the purchase of good business sites. He could transact bis business for a mere bagatelle compared with his European rival. He had no sons to send to college, nor had he any daughters to follow the fashions of Paris. The matter resolved itself into a survival of the fittest —or rather the cheapest—and the white man was dropping out of the race—gradually, no doubt, hut surely. The Chinese arc not content with being mere laborers; -They are ambitious and shrewd enough to become capitalists and. employers, and it is a wonder that this has not been more fully recognised from the first. Take the Chinese population of New Zoaland, for instance, and it will be found that there are relatively more men from the Celestial Empire in business or working on their own account than the people of any other nationality. This is undoubtedly to the credit of “ John,” though it is not pleasant to the man who is handicapped by large responsibilities and more numerous wants. A father of a family would find it a hard matter to confine his household expenses to sixpence a day, and so the Californians found it. As a consequence, the Chinaman’s tenure of the Pacific slope is at the present time most uncertain, and its stability is not likely to improve in the future. Of late years the tropical colony of Queensland was the first to find out that the Chinaman’s absence was better than his company, and if be is not wanted in the hot climate of Queensland, he is certainly not wanted in the temperate regions of New Zealand, where no part is unfitted for the most arduous physical labor by Europeans. The Duke of Wellington is recorded to have said in one of. his Peninsula battles ; “ There are the French, boys ; if you don’t kill them, they will kill you.” Nobody wants to kill the Chinese, but this much is certain, thao white men cannot exist in New Zealand a, igside a numerous body of China .... What dimensions the

“ yellow agony ” will assume it is hard to say. The past is no guide. “ John ” has awakened from his nap of thousands of years—-rudely awakened at first by British and French cannon. Time has brought its revenge. China was forced to open her ports to let opium in and tea out, but from these ports to-day there is issuing a stream of emigration, which, if not checked, threatens to submerge Anglo-Saxon civilisation in these southern lands. We regret to see that many of those who are looked upon as the representatives of democracy in New Zealand, do not seem to bo alive to the impending danger. Mr Turnbull, the other night, treated the subject in a rather gingerly manner, and gave us a little scripture on the matter sentiment about the earth and the fullness thereof being the Lord’s, and that all his creatures were entitled to share thereof. From the foundation of time the earth has been for the strongest and most enlightened—for those best fitted to conquer nature, and overcome enemies. The Caucasian is higher in the scale of created beings than the Mongolian. If it is a question of the survival of the fittest, the latter must succumb. The white man cannot sink to the level of the Chinaman. He will not become the degraded and cheap laborer of the East. The higher a people are civilized the more numerous are their wants, and even the political economists, are agreed that the improvement of the condition of the working classes, is the surest sign of the physical, intellectual .and moral progress of a nation. Shoald a struggle for existence take place between the Mongolian and European it would bo found that other weapons would be used besides those of peaceful industry.