Page:What I Know Of The Labour Traffic.djvu/31

28 even when these are given by a man in a language they do not know, and thinks he will be understood if he speaks sufficiently loud. They have not been trained to continuous effort, they have never felt the insolence or the graciousness of correction—save the little moral influence which may be said to be induced in them by being ruled in a limited degree by their kings or head men, they know little or nothing of restraint. The physic of the doctor, the rod of the schoolmaster, or the rousing voice of the gangman are all odious to them. They die as willingly under the influence of a little authority as they do on a meat diet or a reduction of the temperature. They would give the world to know English, or that the English knew New Irish. Having the frailty of all human beings they are fond of sympathy and an exchange of ideas; nothing is so sweet to them as beads and a clear understanding of what is wanted from them; what they want themselves and what they are going to receive for what they are willing to part with. But from this they are at present debarred, and in a manner that is absolutely appalling to behold; men get angry if these summer children do not apprehend the meaning of an inarticulate thundering noise or some unhuman pantomime. Up to the present your South Sea Islander has been an expensive failure, and I cannot help saying it, you who have suffered most are most to blame.

What remedy you will provide for this state of things, circumstances, an increase of accurate knowledge, combined with the best experience and your common sense, will dictate. You may, perhaps, until an able and enlightened Government shall open up India to your choice, come to the conclusion, that to have training depots at the Islands to prepare and discipline recruits for your garden will be better, more worthy of you in every way, and would certainly be cheaper than to keep expensive and sometimes excellent and adequate hospitals on your own estates. Take, for instance, Bouka, the northernmost point of the Solomons, and always within a day of the ever constant south-east monsoon. There you could acquire suitable land, set up copra works, collect the grotesque but profitable bêche-de-mer, plant sugar, and have a model plantation from whence you could obtain well-drilled recruits for your own service. By this means, or something after this way, you would get better men; you would secure a fair proportion of the hill tribes who are more adapted for acclimatisation; you would obviate the risk, danger, and cost of long voyages. Governmental regulations, if these must continue, could then be rationally carried out without the slightest need of running counter to regulations which have a precedence over all colonial regulations or Government resolutions, or Government Agents. I allude, of course, to the regulations of the Mercantile Shipping Act and the exactions of Insurance Companies. At any rate we all know that the labour traffic is a traffic which need never have brought us trouble. We know that for it to be continued it must be found to be fit and appropriate,