Queensland, has promulgated, if not di
Chinese immigrations into the covered, a high political reason Hitherto the exclusion of the native, of this country from California, Australia and one or two other places has been chiefly based on the hibour question with a slight infusion of morality. The main objection to the Chinese has been that they lower wages, but at the instance of the larrikins of our colonies and the hoodlums of California, a moral plank has generally been inserted in the anti-Chinese platform; just to show that the opposition was not altogether selfish but had a high tone in {ts policy. This plank of the platform was the one to which the attention of outsiders was most frequently directed. It was one of the front planks, and always kept painted in the most striking colours. Every crime in the decalogue and others not included therein imputed to the " heathen Chinee" by masses, whose individual knowledge of good and evil was confined to the definitions of the police magistrates. The selfish element in the opposition to the immigration of Chinese is intelligible it is the same as the endeavours of trades and working men members of par-linment to prevent women being allowed to labour in those trades and occupations which the nobler animal man wishes to preserve to himself, or from which he would exclude those women who are working as their mothers did before them. Women will lower, or they inay lower wages, therefore let them go idle or starve, rather than that the workman should earn less. It is the protective policy which runs through, and is the mainspring of all labour combinations. Before the law strengthened itself in England, outrages, stich as those at Sheffield a quarter of a century ago or so, were one of the ways in which the mass of workingman brought those to reason who refused to bend the knee to the dictates of the majority or the: who acted in the name of the major Since then other and Jess unlawful means have been employed to coerce the workmen who aspire to have a will and a soul of their own, and so produce that dead level in which the good, the indifferent and the bad workman, shall get the same wages, shall share and share alike. It is the same, though the screw is worked in a different way in France, and it will be the same in Germany as soon as the strong hand that holds social disquiet down is removed. In the mineral districts of the United States the same influences have been at work and their object is to overmaster capital, the immigration of hordes of poor Europeans, willing to work for lower wagers than the native miner or ironworker, has already caused some disturbances of the peace. But the field for labour in America is so constantly expanding that the United States can, so to say, "work off such things without. receiving the injury to the system which might be their result in old countries.
All this is an intelligible policy on the part of the working men, It. will generally-be injurious to the develop-y. ment of comparatively new countries, but that will chiefly affect that part of the community which has money. And where that other part which has labour for its stock in trade is dominant in political matters, or so nearly so that politicians must court it, it should be nearly sufficient, and quite sufficient when the moral plank is added. Sir Samuel Walker Griffith, Q. C., Premier of Queensland does not think so, As will be seen from the telegram which we published yesterday he. put a new plank into the anti-Chinese platform. After imparting to the Chinese Commissioners the substance of various communications he had recently received, in regard to the Chinese question, the Premier pointed out the great objections there were to any attempt to introduce both European and Asiatic forms of civilisation ito a democratic country like Queensland." The whole genius of our institutions lay in the direction of permitting everybody to share in the government. This was impracticable in the case of the Chinese who would consequently occupy the position of a governed race, and the result from a "politic I point of view would be extremely unsatisfactory." There you have the highest high democracy, speaking through the lips of Premier, a QC, K.C.MG., enlightening the world, and no doubt thoroughly alg: the Chinese Commissioners. We may infer that what Sir Samuel Grifith meant the world and the Commissioners to understand was, that democratic Queensland might stand cheap labour and all the immorality of China, but not a governed class among them, his is undoubtedly, the true high-minded view, and as all the Australian Colonies and California are children of democracy we may hear a good deal more about it at election times. But how about the Polynesians who form, to the extent of some thousands, part of the population of Queensland 7? Are they embraced by the genius of her tutions in the direction of permitting everybody to share in the zovernment. 'They should be, because the constitution of the Colony offers the franchise to every adult male after a ix months' residence. And if the olynesians why not the Chinese? Surely Asiatic civilisation such as the latter p is equal to that of the Fijians, and the other South Sea la-hourers, who are tempted or kidnapped for the Queensland sugar plantations. Democratic high falutin like this of the Queensland Premier's tickles the ears of his constituents, but did he think it would impose on such part of the world as might care about affairs in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.