all. The Indian
immigrants, now reckoned at 50,000, are of two classes. Some are
coolies, who have been imported from India under indentures binding them
to work for a term of years, chiefly on the sugar plantations of the
coast. Many of these return at the expiration of the term, but more have
remained, and have become artisans in the towns or cultivators of garden
patches. The other class, less numerous, but better educated and more
intelligent, consists (besides some free immigrants of the humbler
class) of so-called "Arabs"--Mahommedans, chiefly from Bombay and the
ports near it, or from Zanzibar--who conduct retail trade, especially
with the natives, and sometimes become rich. Clever dealers, and willing
to sell for small profits, they have practically cut out the European
from business with the native, and thereby incurred his dislike. The
number of the Indians who, under the previous franchise law, were
acquiring electoral rights had latterly grown so fast that, partly owing
to the dislike I have just mentioned, partly to an honest apprehension
that the Indian element, as a whole, might become unduly powerful in the
electorate, an Act was in 1894 passed by the colonial legislature to
exclude them from the suffrage. The home government was not quite
satisfied with the terms in which this Act was originally framed, but in
1897 approved an amended Act which provides that no persons shall be
hereafter admitted to be electors "who (not being of European origin)
are natives or descendants in the male line of natives of countries
which have not hitherto possessed elective representative institutions
founded on the parliamentary franchise, unless they first obtain from
the Governor in Council an order exempting them from the provisions of
this Act." Under this statute the right of suffrage will be withheld
from natives of India and other non-European countries, such as China,
which have no representative government, though power is reserved for
the government to admit specially favoured persons. In 1897 another Act
was passed (and approved by the home government) which permits the
colonial executive to exclude all immigrants who cannot write in
European characters a letter applying to be exempted from the provisions
of the law. It is intended by this measure to stop the entry of
unindentured Indian immigrants of the humbler class.

I have referred particularly to this matter because it illustrates one
of the difficulties