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Solomons, loaded up at once, and returned in five weeks. But the blasted Queensland Government have stopped all that." I defended the course taken by the Government—not because I consider it a course that would, or could, have any permanent practical good result, but for other reasons into which I did not enter with the skipper. His reply to me is worth giving. He said:
"To deprive the English merchant of the right to trade muskets for Kanakas is to handicap him too much. The Queensland proclamation which stopped trade in muskets to Queensland ships will give a monopoly to the French in the musket trade, as well as to all others who trade in copra. The Queensland Government has no control except over its own vessels; and all the vessels, and they are many, which trade with the Islanders of the South Pacific who carry muskets and powder, will cut the Queensland vessels out of the trade."
This I thought was a new and worthy argument to urge on that other argument of annexaton which all men of pariotism and reflection see must soon prevail. Only the Imperial Government can stop this traffic in firearms with the Islanders, by showing a sympathy with all who seek to bring the South Sea Islanders into the British Kingdom; for until these beautiful Islands of the Coral Sea are annexed by Great Britain the more difficult will become the solution of some of the problems which belong to the connection of Queensland with Greater Britain.
Already may you scent a new game. No Master licensed to convey Islanders may now leave any Queensland port with muskets, or gunpowder on board, or be found by an English man-of-war with these things, without running the risk of having his ship seized—but, such is the quick intelligence which directs and presides over the Kanaka trade, that no difficulty need prevent the licensed dealer in Islanders from coming to some understanding with the dealers in copra. The copra dealer may carry muskets and gunpowder, the copra dealer, if he be a German, French, or North American, can get Islanders for muskets, and lodge the Islanders in some safe rendezvous to be agreed upon, and the master of the labour vessel will arrive on the scene at the appointed time, and the thing is done. The risk would be very great, but risk is one of the attractions to many persons engaged in fishing for men. The copra traffic is co-existent, and co-extensive with the labour traffic, it has been contaminated by it from the beginning—nearly all the early atrocities of the labour trade sprang from its relations with the mysterious copra, and may be said to have been the procuring cause of the Islanders' revenge which has overtaken not a few innocent and many misguided men.
