Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/284

 Memorial addressed to Her Majesty’s Government with regard to certain clauses of the Indian Immigration Law Amendment Bill which was recently passed by the Hon. the Legislative Assembly and the Hon. the Legislative Council of Natal, and which is partly based upon Your Excellency’s Dispatch to His Excellency the Governor of Natal on the subject thereof, a copy of which is annexed hereto.

Besides drawing Your Excellency’s attention to the above memorial, your Memorialists beg respectfully to state as follows with regard to the Bill:

Your Excellency’s Memorialists have noticed with regret that Your Excellency is disposed to sanction the principle of compulsory re-indenture, or compulsory return.

Your Memorialists also regret that they did not send a representation at the time the Delegates set out for India. It will be idle to discuss the causes that prevented such a course from being adopted. Your Memorialists, however, confidently hope that the wrong inflicted would be so great, in case the Bill became law, that the above omission will not come in the way of its being averted.

Your Memorialists, with the greatest deference, venture to point out that, if the non-compliance with the condition as to compulsory return could not set the criminal law in motion, the insertion in the contracts of such a clause is absolutely useless, if not actually harmful, in as much as it might encourage the contracting party to break his contract, and the law would connive at such a breach. And since such extreme precaution pre-supposes the injustice of the contract, your Memorialists respectfully submit that the reasons adduced for inducing the sanction are absolutely insufficient, if any reasons could justify it.

As has been hinted at in the annexure, your Memorialists implore Your Excellency not to sanction any of the clauses objected to, but, in accordance with the emphatically expressed opinions of Mr. J. R. Saunders and the Hon. Mr. Escombe quoted in the annexure, to stop immigration to Natal.

Your Memorialists respectfully beg to protest against any section of Her Majesty’s subjects, be they the poorest, being practically enslaved or subjected to a special, obnoxious poll-tax, in order that a body of Colonists, who already have been deriving the greatest benefits from such subjects, may be able to satisfy their whims