Page:A few facts in connection with the Employment of Polynesian Labour in Queensland.djvu/3



HE Rev. Dr. Paton, formerly a missionary in the New Hebrides, but for many years mainly resident in Melbourne, Victoria, has lately, under date December 16th, 1893, renewed his protest to the Colonial Office against Polynesian Labour Engagements for service on Queensland plantations, and has been endeavouring to enlist the sympathies of the people of Great Britain by describing at missionary meetings which he has been holding, a state of affairs in connection with the employment of Polynesian labour in Queensland of so terrible a nature that if true would demand the intervention of the Imperial Government.

This paper is for the purpose of placing before the public the overwhelming evidence that has been tendered in contradiction of the reverend gentleman's assertions.

It is admitted that the Kanaka Labour traffic for New Caledonia (a French colony), Fiji, Sandwich Islands (an independent State), some parts of South America, and even Queensland, was ten and more years ago conducted without supervision, often with great cruelty, and sometimes accompanied by atrocities.

It is a fact, also so far as Queensland, or indeed any British Colony is concerned, all this has been put an end to years ago, and if Dr. Paton reads the press or the official reports to the Colonial Office in London, or to the Colonial Governments in Australia he cannot fail to know that his charges as applied to the facts and circumstances of the present day have no substantial evidence to back them, and have been refuted and disposed of as unreliable again and again during the past seven years.

Dr. Paton is practically unsupported in most of his allegations, and he cannot speak from recent personal observation and knowledge. For some time he has been touring for the purpose of raising funds for missionary purposes, previous to which he resided for years in Melbourne as Foreign Missionary Secretary of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria. It is many years since he visited the scene of his former — let it be acknowledged—heroic missionary labours in Melanesia, and it is believed that he has not paid even a flying trip to the sugar plantations of Queensland during the past decade.

On the other hand, the witnesses against Dr. Paton can be numbered by hundreds of all classes—Governors of Colonies, Ministers of the Crown, officers of Her Majesty's Navy, officials of every