Page:What I Know Of The Labour Traffic.djvu/26

23 Some of you, to your honour, would never have taken these Islanders under your care or into your service, if you had not known how to handle them; and those very plantations where the right methods of treatment have prevailed, are proofs sufficient that the dire mortality which has occurred, was needless. Lastly, have you always been just in your dealing's with these children of the Coral Sea? It is astonishing, and to some, a thing unknown, that injustice kills. To many human beings injustice is more deadly than rats' bane or arsenic. The cause of much of the injustice which planters have meted out to their Islanders, is that in an insolent sense of their own religious as well as racial superiority, they have regarded the Islanders as heathen, and therefore, out of the pale of justice! This thrice-accursed conviction is strong in the minds of all professing Christians, especially those who place a higher value on pious beliefs than on human feelings; and it will become the bounden duty of all citizens of Queensland to ascertain whether this thrice-accursed conviction is wide-spread and abiding; because, if it be, then the trade in Kanakas must cease; not only in the interests of the Islanders, but in your own interests and the interest of humanity.

Heathen! I would infinitely rather live the rest of my days on one of the Islands of the Coral Sea among these "Gentiles of the Isles" than among a people whose god is a trinity of lust, avarice, and greed!

This brings me to our second question. Was the interference of Government in regulating, rectifying, or conducting the labour traffic, effective?

If I have in much sorrow, accused you of blame, it is with much more indignation that I accuse the Government of Queensland of interfering in the labour traffic in such a manner as to foster abuses, breed scandals, and induce the grossest outrages ever committed on human beings.

We have agreed, that Government was compelled to interfere, because murder was being done in the name of trade, and man-stealing in the name of commerce. But the interference ought to have been effective. It was the most defective interference ever made by Government. It was a disgraceful mockery—a shameful delusion, and an effectual snare.

Under the organised interference of Government, Islanders have been brought from their homes who never understood the nature of the "contract" into which they were beguiled.

Under the organised interference of Government, labour vessels have been made into dens of infamy where the grossest sensuality, and obscene living have been rampant, in which some representatives of Government took part, and were as conspicuous for their treachery to the Executive, as for their loathsome immoralities.

Under the organised interference of Government, labour vessels have been fraudulently measured, whereby the responsible Minister has licensed a ship to carry more Islanders than the Statute allowed.