THE NEW HEBRIDES LABOR TRADE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 4, Issue 1204, 14 October 1882, Page 2

THE NEW HEBRIDES LABOR TRADE.

Recently a deputation from the Committee on heathen missions of the Presbyterian Church waited on Sir Arthur H. Gordon for the purpose of an address relating to the labor tract*) in the New Hebrides and the means which should be employed for correcting its evils, and of requesting his excellency to use his influence for the purpose of establishing such control over it as might prevent injury to the Island. His Excellency said,—"l am grateful to you for the opportunity you have afforded me of expressing my sense of the labors of your mission in tliß New Hebrides, and ot congratulating you on the measure of success which has attended them in some part 3ef tho group. I am fully sensible of the obstacles to your work resulting from the oauses you mention. That the labor trade generally speaking, has henn freed from ila worst acuses I believe to be the case, but instances •o doubt from time to time ooour whioh sh'nv that abuses still exist, and that vigilance is otill needed for their repression, [do not mysolf believe that any throughly satisfactory Relation of existing difficulties will be arrived at exoept by an international agreement among the powers ohiefly interested, and I have sanguine i hopeß that audi nn understanding may be shortly effected. Meanwhile, I, may say that the Governments of France and Germany are animated by the same spirit as our own, and that the Governor of New Caledonia and the German ConsulGeneral at Samoa are, I believe actuated by as smgere a desire to check irregularities as lam myself, I regret tljat I oinnot share the opinion that tho assumption of a protectorate over the New Hebrides by Great Britain would prove a remedy for cxiatiug evils, even'if it were probable-~whioh' ji js ' not—that her Majesty's Gov'erurrjejit would ponaent (o undertake such a responajbiljty, |jje proclamation of a nomiu'a| protectorate would not make savages less 1 savage, or unscrupulous men .more scrupulous, and matters in the jslandj'Vflujfl re'inpi'jp at preaem, If, onYijjß. ofher. hflnj},' a'rgally effective supervision and control of' all that goes on is lobe established", the cos,t and the responsibility would not bo less ihan thosß involved in actual annexation a measure of which you do not yourselves ask the adoption, and which I cer(aitily fU|j not prenaved tp, aflvfieate;"