Gen. Sir J. J. Bissett, in an address to the electors of Alfred and Alexandra counties in June, 1884, recognizing the importance of this point, said: “With regard to coolies, I consider that they are introduced for a specific purpose, they should at the expiration of their term of indenture be required to return to India, subject to a maximum extension of term (say) to fifteen years in all. I consider that any benefit derived from them by a section of the community is very greatly counterbalanced by the injury their presence causes the colony, both directly and indirectly. I am also opposed to coolies holding land in this colony.” In my opinion Sir J. J. Bissett’s views display a lamentable ignorance of the first principles of political economy, and are suitable to a timid mercantile community only, afraid of the further cheapening of articles of consumption. A great proportion of the Indians, both in the West Indies and in Natal, as soon as they have served their time and are free from their indentures, become in every sense thorough colonists; they buy property, invest their savings, “marry and are given in marriage,” and show no desire, as statistics prove, to return to India—differing entirely from the Chinese, whose sole object is to return home as soon as possible with every sixpence they can drain out of the country in which they have been living. To my mind the turning away of thrifty bread winners from a country sparsely populated by an infinitesimal working class of whites is the height of absurdity. There is not even the excuse on the ground of morality which the Americans have against the Chinese in California. Moreover, how would Sir J. J. Bissett treat the question of the increase in their population? Would the children born in Natal be allowed to remain there or not? Would he have the Indians under British rule treated in the same manner as the Dutch have since treated them in the Transvaal State, where, certainly without the “liberty, equality and fraternity” popularly supposed to pertain to republican ideas, they passed a law through the Volksraad, which was promulgated on June 10th, 1885, disqualifying “Coolies, Arabs, Malays and other Asiatics” from obtaining the right of citizenship, or from possessing landed property, and compelling them further, under penalty, not only to register themselves, and pay £25 for so doing, but also giving the government power to place them in locations;[66] or would he have them treated as they are in the other Dutch republic (the Free State), where it is contrary to law to let fixed property to Arabs, and where they cannot even procure a license to trade.