Mr. Lyttelton's speech at Leamington on the Chinese labour question,
summarised in our last issue, has been hailed by all the Ministerial organs as a triumphant vindication of the Government policy. One of his great points was that the total number of coolies who had deserted was 275, or no more than "eleven-eighteenths of one per cent.," a statement which was received with sympathetic laughter. Mr. Herbert Samuel, writing to the Times of last Saturday, observes that "this may be the figure of desertions for some brief period not specified in the reported speech, but Mr. Lyttelton did not tell his audience that the total number of Chinese convicted of desertion up to July 31st, according to a Transvaal Government return, was 1,735, and that in addition there were no fewer than 21,205 cases (not days) of 'unlawful absence from work' which did not give rise to prosecution." Statistice have an awkward way of
confounding supporters of Chinese labour as well as Tariff Reformers.
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