A.—3b

1900. NEW ZEALAND.

FEDERATION AND ANNEXATION. (FURTHER PAPERS RELATING TO THE DESIRE OF FIJI TO BE INCORPORATED WITH NEW ZEALAND).

Laid on the Table of the House of Bepresentatives by Leave.

The Hon. Secretary, Fiji Federal League, to the Eight Hon. the Peemier. Sib,— • Suva, Fiji, 7th September, 1900. I have the honour to forward you under separate cover a draft of the memorial and petition which is to be submitted to a public meeting to be held in Suva, on Thursday, the 13th September. It is expected that you will be able to receive the original, duly signed, by the " Hauroto," which leaves Fiji for New Zealand on the 14th instant. I have, &c, Alport Barker, Hon. Sec, Fiji Federal League. The Eight Hon. Eichard Seddon, Premier of New Zealand.

The respectful memorial of the undersigned showeth, — 1. Your memorialists are a committee nominated by the inhabitants of Fiji in public meeting assembled for the purpose of bringing about the incorporation of Fiji with New Zealand. 2. A petition having that object in view was presented on behalf of this colony to the Speaker and House of Bepresentatives so long ago as the year 1885, but did not then meet with a favourable reply. A copy of that petition is hereto appended. A period of fifteen years has elapsed since the presentation of that petition to the Parliament of New Zealand, but the disabilities and the grievances therein set forth still remain unremoved and unredressed; and your memorialists once again, in the name of the people of Fiji, appeal to New Zealand. 3. Since the date of the petition above referred to the numbers of the white population of Fiji have grown by natural increase and otherwise, and now exceeds, it is believed, four thousand persons. During the same period the general population has been increased by the importation of immigrants from British India, as labourers on the great sugar plantations which are established in this colony. The number of such Indian immigrants now approximates fifteen thousand. 4. With deep regret your memorialists find themselves obliged to state that during the period referred to there had been a grave decrease in the native Fijian population. Numbering in the year 1885 approximately a hundred and fifteen thousand, the native Fijian race has now dwindled to ninety thousand, or thereabouts, a decrease of twenty-five thousand in fifteen years. 5. Various causes are from time to time put forward in attempting to explain away responsibility for the condition of the native race. Your memorialists, however, assert without hesitation that the Government of Fiji is unable to rid itself of responsibility for the present condition of the Fijians. The decrease in population is directly attributable to the specially oppressive system of government applied to them, and to the excessive burden of taxation to which, under that system, they are subjected. The accompanying memorandum by the Eev. W. Slade, a Wesleyan missionary among the Fijians of many years' experience, supports the views expressed in this regard by your memorialists, and is a very powerful indictment of the grinding communal system under which the native Fijians are against their will compelled to live. Your memorialists assert that the charges and allegations made by the Eev. W. Slade are in no way exaggerated, and your memorialists would welcome the appointment of a Eoyal Commission to inquire into such charges and allegations, and generally into the causes for the present condition of the native race. 6. Not only are the native inhabitants governed under a system of personal government which retards the moral and injures the physical development of the race, but the white inhabitants of the colony, who are for the most part New-Zealanders and Australians and their descendants, are also subjected to personal government, are entirely deprived of all voice in the making of the laws I—A. 3b.