Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 2.djvu/169

 sympathy with the consensus of public opinion in this Colony as regards the desirability of preventing the overrunning of the Colony by Asiatics. Government is carefully discussing and considering this question with a view to future legislation; but I am to point out that its action will be thwarted rather than helped by any action or demonstration of the character indicated in the second resolution.

Thus it would appear that the quarantine was meant more to harass the passengers into returning to India than to protect the Colony against the introduction of the bubonic plague. The chairman then telegraphed the Government as follows:


 * I am instructed by the Committee to thank you for wire, and have now to ask Government to convey to the Asiatics on board the Naderi and Courland the strong popular feeling against their landing, and request them to return to India at the Colony’s expense.

Another meeting, convened by Captain Sparks, was held on the 7th January, again in the Town Hall, when the following resolutions were passed:


 * That this meeting requests the Government to call a special session of Parliament to take steps to temporarily stop the importation of free Indians, pending the passing of law giving Government these powers; (and) that we proceed by demonstration to the Point on the arrival of the Indians, but each man binds himself to conform to the orders of the leaders.

The speeches at the meeting clearly show that the Government were in full sympathy with its objects, that they would not oppose the mutinous tendency of the meeting, that the imposition of quarantine was nothing but a means to prevent, if possible, the landing of the passengers, and that a special session was to be called in order to pass a Bill indefinitely extending the quarantine. The following are the extracts from the speeches which would illustrate these remarks:


 * If the Government could not possibly help them, then (a voice, “help ourselves”) they must help themselves. (Loud applause.)

Capt. Wylie, in the course of his speech, is reported to have said:


 * Now, they must be pleased to know this, that the action that they (the meeting) had taken had been characterized by the members of the Government as having done more for this cause than anything that had yet been done within the Colony. (Applause.)