Page:What I Know Of The Labour Traffic.djvu/7

5 appointed for their fitness, and not for the votes of their friends, the rapacious traffickers will be unequal to compete with the responsible merchant, and commerce in Islanders will be as well conducted as the immigration of Europeans in steamships by respectable companies who are interested in the price of Queensland stock, and the material progress of the colony. In the mean time, man does not live by commerce alone nor can commerce be said to be the narrow way which leads to everlasting bliss. I have lately talked with Kanaka dealers on the subject of their traffic, who, in a Christian, apologetic way, conveyed to me their convictions, that the trade was good for the Kanakas themselves; that these privileged summer children were carried away from a low animal existence, and brought in contact with a superior race; that they get improved in industrial art; are taught to wear clothing; eat superior food; learn the value of money; and moreover, they had a very good chance of getting their minds expanded.

I was not displeased with this argument. I only suggested that the catalogue of "goods" might have been enlarged; and that the immediate question for us to occupy ourselves with, lay in smaller compass, viz.:—

Is this thing just?

Whether it is pleasant and charitable for the Islander to give him a free passage to Queensland to enlarge his mind; clothe his nakedness; teach him to do systematic work; smoke pipes; earn wages; and become a superior being by learning the filthiness of the local tongues, and become the possessor of the infernal spirit of rum, to be ultimately "conveyed" back to the abject animal life from which he was beguiled, is not the question at issue—Is the thing just? Is it done in a just and righteous way? Because, if it is not just, you had much better leave the Islander where he is, and wait until he asks you to do for him that great and manifold service, instead of taking so much pains to press your benevolent designs upon his contracted mind.

"Granted," I continued to say to these Christian merchants, "that you have proved to your own satisfaction, that you have raised the Kanaka in the scale of humanity, will you submit to be examined on the question of how much you have, at the same time, improved your own account at the National Bank? When you have given us a faithful return of that improvement, we will then consider what your desire for the improvement of the Kanaka really amounts to."

"Another manifest form of injustice in this traffic is," I went on, "that the 'contract' entered into, is a one-sided contract. No Islander