10th April, Tue home mail of the 2nd of March brings us a report of the debate in the House of Lords upon the Transvaal and the Chinese Labour question, As in all debated questions, and especially in those the seat of which lies far afield from the site of the debate, the exaggera ated statements of the speakers on opposite sides render it difficult, if not impossible, for lookers-on to arrive at a just conclusion. We residents in China are supposed to be in @ position to form an opinion, and correspondents of home papers residing in China have not hesitated to express their views on the question, We know that the Chinese coolie is an efficient workman and tractable servant, We know that he emigrates to the Straits Settlements in ever increasing numbers and that whole districts in South China have been transmuted into comparative affluence by the wealth of returned emigrants. We are aware of the poverty that prevails in the congested districts in Chit north and south, which drives the Northerner ever further into the cold of Manchuria and Mongolia, and the Southerner to field-work under a tropical sue, such as the tropical-born themselves cannot be brought to face, Why then should we, who know the Chinese coolie in his poverty and in his work, not declare unreservedly that the opportunity of emigrating to the Transvaal, with ils temperate climate and high wages-rate, is a real boon which it would be cruel if no* criminal to decry?
The ground of our consistent nonsupport of the project and of our objection to the form of the emigration which has now placed no less than 60,000 Chinese in the Transines, lies alone in the restric-imposed. The coolie is well paid with wages of a shilling to twenty pence a day; he travels to and fro in far greater comfort than does
emigrant steamer; he is well fed the average steerage passenger loan and housed when on the Rand; and there would seem prima facie to be no cause of complaint whatever, Yes numbers of the coolies are discontented; some, as we know, break loose from the compounds, facing starvation outside; and the reagan is that the compound system lees the men in the power of ignorant white overseers, some of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.