casts from British society have taken an active part in the cruel slaughters of one tribe by another; that they have introduced the use of ardent spirits and of fast-destroying disease; and that, as a natural consequence," the natives are swept off in a ratio which promises at no very distant period to leave the country destitute of a single aboriginal inhabitant." The last statement I have given in the very words of Mr. Busby, an officer of the Colonial Department, who resides in New Zealand, for no other purpose, it would appear, than that of writing accounts of these enormities for the use (should I not rather say for the utter neglect ?) of Lord Glenelg. He says further, "District after district has become void of its inhabitants, and the population is even now but a remnant of what it was in the memory of some European residents." Now, is this a case of urgency? Is this a matter to be slept over for years, until the native race shall have disappeared altogether?

And further I venture to ask the right hon. gentleman the President of the Board of Trade' whether he has not received a memorial, signed by a large number of the merchants and shipowners of London, trading to the South Seas, representing that unless prompt measures be taken to establish British authority in New Zealand it is fully to be expected that the lawless British settlers in that country will become a piratical community like the buccaneers of old; and that even now the greatest danger is to be apprehended to our shipping? What has the noble lord, who should have been most conversant with this evil and this 1 Mr. Poulett Thomson.

danger, what has he done, either on behalf of the natives of New Zealand, or of our shipping in the South Seas? What has he proposed? What has he thought of? He has done, proposed, thought of, absolutely nothing! If it had been a matter in the moon he could not have been more careless about it.

The next colony to which I will refer is the Mauritius. Last year the state of that colony was brought under the consideration of this House on a motion for a committee of inquiry. Various facts, proving the very disturbed condition of the Mauritius, were stated by an honourable gentleman intimately acquainted with the subject, I mean the learned civilian, the member for the Tower Hamlets.1 Those statements were not contradicted by any one. To this high and unquestionable authority I shall now appeal for the facts I am about to mention. He said, "The most extraordinary circumstances have been detailed to me (and they are not yet denied) as to the conduct, or rather misconduct, of various Governors of the island of Mauritius, and as to the administration of justice, or rather its maladministration there." "Since the year 1810 there has been in that colony a perpetual violation of the statute law of the land. Upwards of 20,000 felonies have been committed (as admitted by Sir G. Murray), and remain unpunished, without one solitary exception; and up to the present hour these wrongs remain unredressed." The slave trade has been carried on in opposition to the law. When, from time to time, this country has applied to the French

1 Dr. Lushington (afterwards Judge of the Admiralty Court and Dean of Arches).

Government to enforce the provisions of the Act for the abolition of the slave trade, "France," said the honourable gentleman, "taunted us by saying that our power was defied and our laws evaded by our own colonists. This opposition to the law prevails up to the present hour; it has existed in its most malignant form for the last three or four years. I will not consent to throw the veil of oblivion over the conduct of those who avow their crimes and boast of their impunity. What has been the history of the last four years? Treason has been triumphant in the Mauritius; thousands of colonists have been banded in arms against the domination and power of England; manifestoes have been published throughout the colony, in which the wretches who indited them dared to say that the time had come when assassination-assassination by the sword, by poison, or by fire-was to be justified. This has been the state of the Mauritius; these the crimes which have been raging." He likewise asserted that "20,000 individuals, who were as much entitled to their freedom as any man in this House, have been kept for the last fifteen years, contrary to both law and justice, in a state of the most cruel slavery." These are a few of the facts adduced by the learned civilian when he demanded last year an inquiry into the state of the Mauritius. The refusal of that inquiry, he said, would be "a triumph to those who have hitherto rebelled against the British Government, and hopeless misery and despair to those who have been the victims for so many years of this cruel persecution. The free coloured people of the Mauritius, a very numerous and intelligent body, a deputation of whom have

come to this country to seek for justice and inquiry at the hands of a British House of Commons, will sink into despair if inquiry be denied, and they are told to place themselves again at the mercy of those from whom they have already experienced so much injustice and oppression. The deputation will go back believing that they and those whom they represent are devoted victims of the other party." A similar tone was taken by my honourable friend the member for Liskeard. Notwithstanding the eloquent complaints, the friendly entreaties of these honourable gentlemen, the inquiry was denied; and I feel justified in asserting that the state of the Mauritius is most critical.

What has Lord Glenelg done, proposed, thought of, with a view to the critical state of the Mauritius? If information on the subject were required by this House, the return, I fear, would be "nil!" It matters not where the emergency may exist, or how great it may be, in every case where decision, activity, energy, is especially required, there we shall find, not that the noble lord has done more than in other cases, but only that his inactivity and supineness are the more to be deprecated and regretted.

The next colony to whose critical-might I not say deplorable ?-state I would wish, sir, to call your attention is our settlement in Southern Africa, at the Cape of Good Hope, a territory larger than the whole of the mother country. It was once inhabited by numerous aborigines, rich in flocks and herds; by the Hottentots and the far superior race of the Kaffirs. The natives have nearly

1 Mr. C. Buller.

M.

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disappeared, partly massacred, partly driven from their native country; even now the system of destruction is going on, and in proportion as our frontiers are extended the native tribes are swept away. Sir, I can appeal to the labours of a Committee of this House, the Committee on Aborigines, for a confirmation of my statement. Any travellers," say they, "who may have visited the interior of this colony little more than twenty years ago, may now stand on the heights of Albany, or in the midst of a district of 42,000 square miles, on the west side of Graaf Reinet, and ask the question, 'Where are the aboriginal inhabitants of the district, which I saw here on my former visit to this country?' without anyone being able to inform him where he is to look for them to find them." What, I ask, has become of them? They have perished. They were generally exterminated by those execrable military expeditions, commenced by the Dutch, continued by the English, which are termed commandoes. Another cause of the destruction of the natives is the interminable wars occasioned by the stealing of cattle. The colonists, on the most futile pretexts, have frequently carried off the cattle of the natives. The natives, deprived of the means of subsistence, must either perish or rob. If they rob the whites, they are exterminated by the commandoes; if they rob their weaker neighbours, these again, thus left to starve, must rob those beyond them or perish. Thus the first robbery by our colonists has given rise to a succession of robberies and native wars which have desolated the most central parts of the continent of Africa. One of the witnesses examined before