Page:Northmost Australia volume 2.djvu/21

370 Under the (Imperial) Pacific Islanders' Protection Acts of 1872 and 1875, naval officers were entrusted with formidable powers, to be used at their discretion and on their own responsibility. Naval interference, as a rule, amounted to a demonstration that an irresistible power was to be reckoned with by white men or black who overstepped the bounds of fair dealing or resorted to violence.

After some chaotic years, the Government managed to regulate the labour traffic for the fisheries in matters affecting recruiting licences, term of service, remuneration and other conditions, and the industry then settled down satisfactorily into working order.

Captain Moresby, as we have already observed, appeared on the scene in a period of transition. New Colonial legislation regarding licences to recruit had just come into force, and such of the recruiters of labour and employers as had heard of them, had suspended operations and were waiting for licences, while others had not even heard of them. In such circumstances, action of a very tactful nature was obviously demanded, but Moresby was enthusiastic and zealous, and treated as a slaver, and therefore a lawful prize, every ship on which an islander could be found who complained that he had been misled as to the term of service (although the offence might have been committed before there was any law on the subject). It need only be said that the courts of appeal did not support his view of the justice of retrospective penalties. The wording of the 1872 Act, forbidding ships to carry unlicensed labourers "except the crew," it seems to me, left room for an elastic interpretation of the word "crew." In a passenger or cargo vessel the crew may be defined as the men necessary to make it go; but in a fishing-boat which is also a fish-curing factory the definition may be stretched to the point of absurdity.

The foreign skilled labour employed in the "fisheries" more and more in demand as deeper diving became necessary has always been furnished by the justly self-respecting natives of Japan and the Malay Peninsula, who are not less expert in the making and the legal enforcement of bargains than in deep diving, and may be trusted to safeguard their own interests.

The sugar industry had no need for aboriginal labour, except during the initial operation of clearing the land; and the ring-barking and felling of trees, especially when the natives were supplied with steel axes new toys with which it was a pleasure to work, when contrasted with their own stone implements was light labour, made lighter still by the zest of destructiveness, and exactly suited to their temperament. The planters had no difficulty with them, and already the only terms on which the aborigines would work were well understood. The planter practically said to the local tribesmen: "Come when you like. For a certain number of trees barked, felled or grubbed, you will get enough blankets, clothing, flour, meat, tea and tobacco, and a little money for yourselves and