TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE INDIANS IN THE TRANSVAAL.
THE Colonial Office refrained from withholding its sanction to the law just passed in the Transvaal further restricting the immigration of natives of India into the Colony. Considering that almost every white Colonist, whether Dutch or English, is in favour of the Act, and that the feeling which lies at the root of the measure is universal in the self-governing Colonies, Lord Elgin has probably acted 'wisely; but the incident illustrates strongly the increasing difficulty of legis- lating for an Empire so complex, and including such wide differences of colour and creed, and so many degrees of civilisation. Natives of India make, as a rule, excellent colonists. They are very industrious and adaptable ; they succeed in the smaller trades ; they are law-abiding and pay their taxes regularly ; and they are almost entirely free from crimes of violence. They are, however, not popular. In addition to the prejudice caused by difference of colour—a prejudice which has much deeper roots in history than "the man in the street" always remembers—they are content to make leas profit than their white rivals. They are consequently very keen in enforcing small claims, and they are apt to hold together in a way which their more individualised competitors find embarrassing. They create, moreover, an impression—not entirely unjustified—that they are always "swarming in," and that if they are once accepted as part of the community, they may soon eat out the race which deems itself the higher, and which at all events founded the Colony. The people of the Transvaal had con- sequently already resolved that no more should be admitted ; and then came up the question what was to be done with those already on the spot. It seemed too oppressive to expel them summarily. Yet if they were passed over they were almost certain to conceal and protect immigrants of their own class whom it was not intended to receive. The Transvaalers therefore resolved that the Indians should all be registered, and, to make registra- tion effective, that they should all be compelled to print their finger-marks in the manner demanded of criminals. The Indians, who are all sensitive about their dignity, considered this demand an insult, and unanimously refused to obey the law. Whereupon it was resolved, as a final way out of the difficulty, to deport all the recalcitrants. This provision, besides being rather cruel, involved a very serious question of Imperial policy. It seems, and indeed is, very unfair that law-abiding and taxpaying subjects of his Majesty should, simply because they are dark in colour and inconveniently frugal in habits of life, be forbidden to settle in the least congested sections of his Majesty's own dominion. On the other hand, the Cdionies have been granted full rights of representative self-government, and hold with even bitter vehemence that the first of those rights is to settle what the future ethnic conditions of their growing States shall be. They will not allow them to be filled with a new population of two colours, two ideals, and two sets of habits entirely inconsistent with each other. They are probably in the right, for while admitting to the full the loyalty, the good qualities, and the industry of the natives of India, it is certain that competition with them as industrials is nearly impossible, and that a province filled with them will not be equal either in energy or rapidity of progress to a province filled with Englishmen or other Europeans. It is difficult to argue, moreover, that a Colony to which self-government has been conceded ought not to claim the privilege of regulating the kind of settlers whom it is willing freely to receive. We undoubtedly claim the privilege for ourselves, having quite recently passed restrictive laws upon the admission of aliens ; while it is quite certain that if those aliens were of a colour differing from our own, and arrived in unlimited numbers, we should refuse them admission altogether, and probably pass very severe laws to prevent any evasion of the restrictive enactments. We do not see how this can be denied, any more than we see how it can be denied that natives of India in being refused entrance into the white Colonies are refused a privilege which prime2 facie ought to belong to every taxpaying subject of his Majesty. There is, in fact—and it is much better to acknowledge it without further chopping of Constitutional logic---a Wion of two hostile ideals, both of which are substantially just, and in accord. ance with the beet teaching obtainable in modern systems of thought.
The Colonial Office, we fear, is in the right. The future is with the Colonies, and nothing could be more ill-advised than to fill them from the first with colliding races. Not to mention the danger which might arise of a diminution of the energy most necessary in the population of new lands, there might arise also racial antipathies tend- ing to produce either an oppressive system of caste difference —an aristocratic system, in fact, of the very worst kind— or, worse still, a disposition to re-establish the system of slavery from which it has taken so much energy, expenditure, and bloodshed to liberate the world. On the other hand, India may be profoundly irritated by what her literary class will unquestionably denounce as gross un- fairness. Well, we must bear that, and we can bear it, all the more easily because, though we fully admit the un- fairness that unfairness will not produce any substantial to :o India. Her people are not seeking emigration in any large numbers ; and if they need the relief which emigration affords, they can find it in the Crown Colonies, and still more easily in the provinces which, like those in the valley of the Brahmapootra and in the centre of India, are only half filled up. It is a choice of evils, and this is, on the whole, the lesser of the two, especially if the Trans- vaalers will vote a fair compensation to the innocent victims of a political necessity. Indians will not be rejected in Guiana, the West Indies, and the vast regions of East and West Africa, where the tropical conditions will be even more acceptable to the natives of India than those of States like the Transvaal. We wish, from many points of view, that it were possible to add to the list the Western divisions of Australia ; but we recognise that the white Colonists look upon those regions, which are really tropical, as part of their heritage, and will not admit the people of India except under restrictive laws, which create, as we see in the case of the Chinese, conditions of life which, though they , do not constitute "slavery," are irreconcilable with the British principle of complete personal freedom. In practice, of course, if Hindus were freely admitted into Western Australia, the Southern Continent would be occupied by two jarring, perhaps irreconcilable, civilisations,—a prospect which it is the duty of every statesman to avoid.
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