It has since been attempted by more than one power to continue the trade under the disguised form of cooly and contract labor. Were it honestly conducted, and the contracts punctually executed on the part of the employers, there can be no doubt that it would be a means of elevating the benighted people into a higher standard by the contact with and example of a superior or, rather, more advanced race. But it requires a strong and enlightened government to act as umpire in such cases, and governments, unless they find their influence remunerative, do not care to take too much trouble. The ignorant islanders of the South Seas have suffered terribly from this supineness, indifference, or want of close scrutiny and rigid enforcement of every detail in the contract by the Queensland government. They have been decoyed on board the labor-ships under various pretences, and conveyed away never to return; or they have been allowed to go to the Queensland plantations uncared and unprovided for; or, after the term of contract has expired, they have been landed on islands with which they were totally unacquainted, and become food for savages or been made slaves. That such things should be possible in a British colony argues a woful ignorance of the uses of a government, inexcusable stupidity, a shocking lack of feeling, and an incredible amount of ingratitude. It would not be difficult to prove such a system worse than open slavery. The Portuguese have also been until recently offenders against public sentiment in the matter of exporting “colonials” from Angola for the cocoa groves of Prince’s Island and the sugar estates of St. Thomas. These colonials are natives collected from the interior, who, before embarkation, are looked at by a government functionary, and then have tin tickets slung around their necks, are given a blanket and a few flimsy cottons, and are deported to the islands for a term which to too many of them must be indefinite. The official declared that all was fair and just, but no one with a fair mind on viewing a barge-load of these unfortunates could possibly accept such a statement from an underbred and illiterate official as a voucher. It appears to me that if the colonials are absolutely required for the islands by the Portuguese, or contract kanakas by Queensland planters, their engagement might be made as honest as an agreement with a number of English navvies for the Suakim-Berber Railway, or Italians for the Congo Railway, or Jamaicans for the Panama Canal. But it should be remembered that the lower, the more degraded, and more ignorant the people from whom these labor gangs are drawn, the greater are the responsibilities of the government sanctioning such engagements. For in cases where the government authorizes “contract labor” or “colonialism,” it should be prepared to supply to the ignorant native that care, knowledge, prudence, and security which the English, Italian, and Jamaican navvies possess by education, color, and