Mr. Chamberlain himself declared that there was considerable indignation expressed throughout South Africa at the proposal to introduce Chinese labour, and that a vast majority of the people throughout South Africa were bitterly opposed to the Ordinance.
The colonies were not slow in sending passionate protests to the Colonial Office against the Ordinance. Mr. Seddon wired—"My Government desire to protest against the proposal to introduce Chinese labour into South Africa. They foresee that great dangers, racial, social and political, would inevitably be introduced by Chinese influx, however stringent the conditions of introduction and employment may be."
Mr. Deakin, the Premier of Australia, declared that Australia had been told that the war was a miners' war, but not for Chinese miners; a war for the franchise, but not for Chinese franchise. The truth, if it had been told, would have presented a very different aspect, and would have made a very different appeal to Australia.
Cape Colony, which was more intimately concerned with the welfare of the Transvaal than any other portion of the Empire, passed a resolution in the Cape Parliament, "That this House, taking cognizance of the resolution passed at the recent Conference held at Bloemfontein on the subject of the qualified approval of the importation of Asiatic labour, desires to express its strong opposition to any such importation as prejudicial to the interests of all classes of people in South Africa."
This last resolution had been sent to the Government as long before as July 1903, when the first steps were being taken to pave the way for yellow slavery.
But of all these protests the Government took no notice whatever. They met all questions with a statement that the Transvaal was to be allowed to decide on its own internal affairs; and when the Opposition demanded that the opinion of the Transvaal should be taken, so that these principles could be carried into effect, they replied that a referendum, the only means of ascertaining this opinion, would take six months, during which time the Transvaal would be ruined.
Never was the logic of any of the characters in Alice in Wonderland so unanswerable.
In the Transvaal itself loud and indignant protests were made against the proposal. But the Rand lords asserted their supremacy with ruthless severity. The Transvaal Leader, the Transvaal Advertiser, and the Johannesburg Star all opposed the introduction of Asiatic labour. Their respective editors, Mr. R. J. Pakeman, Mr. J. Scoble, and Mr. Monypenny, were compelled to resign because they refused to sacrifice their opinions for their proprietors. Some idea of the pressure that was brought to bear, may be seen in the valedictory editorial which Mr. Monypenny wrote on retiring from the editorship of the Johannesburg Star:—
"To the policy of Chinese immigration, to which the Chamber of Mines has decided to devote its energies, the present editor of the Star remains resolutely opposed, and declines in any way to identify himself with such an experiment. To the ideal of a white South Africa, which, to whatever qualifications it may necessarily be subject, is something very different from the ideal of a Chinese South Africa, he resolutely clings, with perfect faith that whatever its enemies may do to-day that ideal will inevitably prevail. But as the financial houses which control the mining industry of the Transvaal have for the present enrolled themselves among its enemies the present editor of the Star withdraws."