knowledge of the conditions of life in the Pacific convinces. the board that no regulations, however honestly and skillfully framed, will avail to prevent gross abuse and wrong."

The Anti-slavery Society follows with the same declaration; and also Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson and many others.

May I now refer to one or two of the regulations to show the impracticability of working them?

Regulation XI. requires that "every return passenger is duly landed, along with his property, not only on his own island, but at his own village or district, and on no account must any islander be landed at any island, village or district, other than the one from which he came originally, unless he expressly wishes it, in which case a full explanation of the circumstances must be entered in the log."

Now it is well known that the islands are isolated, difficult to navigate, subject to sudden hurricanes, deficient in harbor accommodation, and that the recruiting is done along the shore, as opportunities of calm or a lee shore present themselves. I entreat your lordship to consider the unlikelihood, nay, the impossibility, that the same conditions will be experienced at the various places on the return of these recruits after three years' service. Suppose a lee shore, from which a recruit was taken, is on his return subject to the full fury of a gale, how can he be landed "at his own village or district"? Or, suppose that, spite of a high sea, the expert recruit by swimming (as all the islanders can) could reach the boat to recruit to Queensland, on his return he must be duly landed along with his property," an impossibility, even under the same conditions of sea in which he was taken away. The smallest experience will cause any one to see how easily the condition "unless he expressly wishes it" may be made a way out of the difficulty. The poor returned Kanaka is forced to decide (to expressly wish ") either to be landed at some place other than his own village or district; or at some adjacent island; or to return to Queensland for a further term of service. If he elects the first alternative he will certainly lose "his property" by theft or violence, and probably his life also. If the second (he will not

agree to the second condition unless the adjacent island is Christianized, because otherwise it would be certain death to do so) he becomes a charge and a burden on the Christian natives until they can send him home. And if he is shut up to the last condition, the captain of the labor vessel has secured an easy and profitable recruit.

SECOND MAIN CONTENTION.

I assert further that the traffic is unprincipled, and, as such is unworthy of an enlightened and Christian colony; and I submit a summary of the grounds for that conviction :—

(1) Though the Islanders of the New Hebrides have no settled government, there are communal obligations which are entirely annulled by the removal of the able-bodied islander from his home. (2) The islands are, by the traffic, deprived of their best manhood, causing rapid depopulation, while the strength and protection of husbands and fathers are withdrawn. (3) The death-rate of the picked healthy men, whose ages vary from sixteen to forty, on the plantations, is a perpetual condemnation of the traffic. In 1891 the average over Queensland was sixty per one thousand. (4) Further, depopulation of the islands is caused by the introduction of foreign disease through the labor vessels. (5) Immorality is fostered on the islands by the withdrawal of the husbands; constant feuds and bloodshedding arise from this source. (6) Immorality is equally fostered on the Queensland plantations by the presence of perhaps not more than one woman to every twenty native healthy men. (7) So liable are the regulations to abuse, that, even in Queensland, where all is said to be fair and righteous, both in the treatment of the Kanakas and the faithful discharge of the obligations for their return at the end of their period, grave abuses arise. (8) In Queensland the Kanakas have no rights of citizenship. They are not free to take employment other than on the plantations. They are collected, selected, and retained by the planter, and are, to all intents and purposes, absolutely his bondmen for three years. (9) The best authorities agree that Papuans are incapable of continued exertion such as is

required on the plantations. The work amongst sugar cane in the tropics is very unhealthy, leading to consumption, and the high death-rate, I have already referred to. (10) White laborers are paid highly for work that endangers life; but, with regard to the poor Kanakas, life is reckoned cheaply, and they are considered sufficiently well paid by 4d. a day with rations, for work that would otherwise cost from 5s. to 8s. a day, the profit going to the planter. (1) I have abstained from putting forward, in a far more painful light than that indicated by the Bishop of Tasmania on page 19 of Blue Book C 7000 (clause C, paragraph 2) the disastrous effect of the traffic on our Christian Mission.

In this connection, however, I would place on record our deliberate judgment that after thirty-five years' self-sacrificing labor to elevate these savage peoples, during which seven British missionaries have been martyred on our own islands and some £250,000 of British money has been spent, it is but just that we should receive protection from Britain in our labors. (1) As a duty to us as British men and women; (2) as a duty to civilization; and (3) I think I may add, as the only method of showing gratitude for the preservation of hundreds of British lives from what, had these islands been left alone, would have been a horrible fate through cannibalism.

CONCLUSION.

In conclusion let me point out how frequently Sir James Garrick and others, in replying to accusations against the traffic, have assured the public that so long as Sir Samuel Griffiths was Premier of Queensland, there was no room to doubt that all abuses would carefully be inquired into, and the regulations duly enforced. I have pointed out the impossibility of enforcing the regulations; but I would add that, almost immediately after the last declaration of the Queensland Agent-General to the above effect, Sir S. Griffiths resigned the Premiership, and is no longer officially responsible.

I do not refer to the Bishop of Tasmania's letter favoring the traffic except to say in one word that the Bishop judges

by hearsay evidence obtained on a flying visit, whereas my colleagues and I, the naval officers, the High Commissioner, and the missionary societies, whose opinions I have quoted, judge from long residence on the islands, and from an intimate (and painful) daily acquaintance with the traffic as it came before us at our posts of duty.

I do solemnly assure your lordship, without bias or prejudice against planters, agents, or crews, that the system of securing Polynesian labor for the Queensland plantations is a relic of the bygone and barbarous past, a veiled system of slavery— robbed to some extent of its bloodshed and murder-but carried on by deceit and allurement, by bribes and plausibility, through the agency of trained native decoys, under cover of armed boats' crews, captains, and Government agents, in regions far from the vigilant eye of the law. While humanity is at a very low ebb in the South Sea labor collectors, and while deeds can be perpetrated on speechless natives, whose dark bodies alone are desired for the energy that can be forced out of them to fill the coffers of white men ; while the planters own labor ships and hire captains and crews; and while a handsome premium is given all round for Kanaka recruits, the traffic is bound to be a curse and a degradation to all engaged in it, and a blot on the fair name of Britain.

I entreat your lordship to hear the heartfelt plea of an old man, burdened with the evils that are heaped upon his defenseless people, just as they are emerging from the long black midnight of gross heathenism and cannibalism. Oh, that my beloved country would rise and stamp out this foul system; that the land of Wilberforce and Clarkson; that the Britain whose blood and treasure have been freely sacrificed to enable her to assume the proud honor of a nation that never owns a slave; that my own beloved home-land would add to its roll of glorious triumphs this, that her children must not and shall not disgrace her name by playing with a deadly system that has in the past, and must in the future, lead to abuse, bloodshed, and God-dishonoring cruelty, little short of that accursed thing called slavery. J. G. PATON.

2 Park-quadrant, Glasgow.

ALBERT SHAW ON NEED OF AN EXPERT FOREIGN SERVICE.

The writer made the round of various European and Asiatic consulates at the time when in 1889 Mr. Harrison and Mr. Blaine were "cutting off the heads" of the Democratic incumbents who had succeeded the men that Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Bayard decapitated in 1885. It happens that again in 1893 he visited a number of European consulates and witnessed the effects of another "clean sweep." Almost invariably he found that four years of service had given an official enough training to make him useful. Many of the consuls rudely displaced by Mr. Harrison were rendering splendid service, were absolutely free from any display of "offensive partisanship," and ought by every rule of good business sense, of fair play and of public and private morality, to have been retained. To some of them the recall was a pathetic hardship. The situation was not different in the year just ended. Many difficult investigations had been committed to our consuls, having to do with trade and commerce, with agriculture, with public improvements, with municipal government, with emigration, with pauperism, with the public health, and with various other topics. A fine morale had been developed, for the most part, and the service had begun in the last year of the Harrison Administration to show signs of a commendable average efficiency. But a majority of the voters of the United States were opposed to the McKinley tariff; and therefore hundreds of our agents in all foreign countries must be discharged, and the whole service must be reduced to the kindergarten stage once more, to the serious detriment of every permanent interest that is served by a regular, experienced body of foreign representatives. It is a state of affairs that calls for righteous wrath. It would not appear advisable to put the diplomatic and consular service upon the same basis as the army and navy; but there ought to be promotions within the ranks, and every presumption ought to be against the dismissal of a distinctly valuable officer who wishes to remain in service.-From "The Progress of the World," in the January Review of Reviews.