The Blue-book in question contains much interesting reading on the franchise question and shows clearly that the idea of special disqualification was repugnant to the Colonists at the time.
The reports of the various meetings held in connection with the franchise show that the speakers have invariably argued that the Indians shall not be allowed to occupy this country which has been won by European blood and which has been made what it is by European hands, and show that the Indians are treated as intruders in the Colony. As to the first statement, I can only say that, if the Indians are to be denied any privileges because they have not shed their blood for this land, the Europeans belonging to other States in Europe should not receive the same privileges. It could also be argued that the immigrants from England also have no business to trespass upon the special preserve of the first white settlers. And surely, if the shedding of blood is any criterion of merit, and if British Colonists consider the other British dominions as portions of the British Empire, the Indians have shed their blood for Britain on many an occasion. The Chitral campaign is the most recent instance.
As to the Colony having been made by European hands and the Indian being an intruder, I beg to submit that all the facts show quite the opposite.
Without any comments of my own I shall now venture to quote extracts from the Report of the Indian Immigrants Commission referred to above, for a loan of which I am indebted to the Protector of Immigrants.
Says Mr. Saunders, one of the Commissioners, at page 98:
- Indian immigration brought prosperity, prices rose, people were no longer content to grow or sell produce for a song, they could do better; war, high prices for wool, sugar, etc., kept up prosperity and prices of local produce in which the Indians dealt.
On page 99 he says:
- I return to the consideration of the question as one of broad public interest. One thing is certain—white men will not settle in Natal or any other part of South Africa to become mere hewers of wood and drawers of water; rather than that they will leave us either for the vast interior or by sea. While this is a fact, our records prove, as do those of other Colonies, that the introduction of coloured labour which develops and draws out the hidden capabilities of the soil and its unoccupied acres opens out at the same time numerous unforeseen fields for the profitable employment of white settlers.
