wrote a beautiful series of letters in 1895 when he first brought himself to study the system personally and compared the system of indenture, after a due investigation, to a state bordering on slavery. On one occasion he used the expression semi-slavery. Mr. Gandhi said if he erred in making these statements, he erred in Lord Selborne's company. And it was in connection with this system that these two worthy gentlemen, the Commissioners, had seen fit to report and advise the fulfilment of certain conditions which, in the very nature of the contract, were impossible of fulfilment. The conditions were that unsuitable emigrants be excluded; the proportion of females to males to be raised from 40 to 50 per cent. The speaker could not understand what they meant by unsuitable emigrants being excluded, The Commissioners themselves told them that it was not easy to find labour in India. India was not pining to send her children out as semi-slaves. Lord Sanderson stated that it was the surplus population from India that went out from dissatisfaction with the economic conditions in India. But they must remember that there were 500 recruiting licences issued in the year 1907. Could they conceive the significance of the extraordinary state of things which required one recruiter to 17 labourers? The Colonial Governments had their sub-agents in India for this indentured labour to be collected. They were paid a sum of Rs. 25 for each cooly recruited, and this sum of Rs. 25 was divided between the recruiter and the sub-agent. Mr. Gandhi thought the mental state of those recruiters must be miserable, who could send so many of their countryman as semi-slaves. After having seen what the recruiting agents did and after having read the many gross
