"It is all very well for people that are not affected as we are, to tell us we must put up with it," said Brown; "but, assuming that labour would find its own level as you state; that is, I imagine, by offering security against the blacks, if we admitted that the blacks were dangerous (though we deny it); does it not follow, that we, in these districts, are entitled to some consideration on the part of our rulers? We contribute to the support of the state, and are therefore entitled to protection from the government; but are we likely to get that? I don't believe it. We are just allowed to struggle on as best we can. But it will result in this; we will have to take the remedy into our own hands; labour we must have, and if our own countrymen will not accept our employment, even at exorbitant wages, we will have to procure it from some foreign source."
"May I enquire," said Mr. Moffatt, "the source you would propose?"
"It is immaterial which," replied Brown; "whatever would be found the most advantageous, the people that would be most industrious, and whose labour could be obtained at the cheapest rate of wage. I have often been at a loss to understand why the Victorian government has adopted such stringent laws to endeavour to keep the Chinese out of Melbourne. They are essentially an industrious class of people, and just the very sort of men we want; they make excellent shepherds, more attentive to their work than Europeans, less difficult to please in their rations, and can be obtained at far less wages."
"I can enlighten you," said the wool-buyer, "if you are ignorant as to the reason of the Victorian people desiring a restriction on the immense influx of Chinese immigrants. They have been landed in that colony in thousands, and may be said, though forming an integral part of our population, to be a distinct people and nation. They speak their own language only, have their own religion, are proverbially the laziest, filthiest, and most immoral people contained in the state, and come without their females. So that they do not settle amongst us; but those that are sufficiently fortunate to make money return with their gains to their own country to excite the avarice of their countrymen; while those that are not successful are left to starve and die, or commit depredations on our settlers. They swarm together in large numbers in small tenements in our large towns; and, by their vice and filth, generate noisome diseases amongst themselves, and pestilence in the neighbourhood in which they live; and their abodes and their persons are alike mephitic. They are in fact the scum of our population, and far more degraded even than the denizens of the vilest purlieus of Britain's metropolis. They, as doubtless you are aware, live and migrate in large bodies, from one to other of the diggings, blighting each locality in their transient passage, as swarms of locusts. They stab one another, and commit murder amongst themselves, of which the authorities never hear. They commit depredations on the whites, for which they are never punished from the difficulty in detecting the delinquent; and, as I said before, they spread disease wherever they go. They are therefore no benefit to the country; for, with the exception of rice and opium, they consume no mercantile commodities, but annually drain a considerable quantity of gold from it. It is considering these facts, and that they are filling places that could be advantageously occupied by our own countrymen, that the colonists of Victoria have attempted to restrict their entrance into the country, by the exaction of a ten pound poll-tax. I am only sorry to see that the example is not followed by the other colonies, for while Victoria stands alone, she will never succeed in keeping the evil away."
"And I am very glad to think the other colonies are liberal-minded enough not do so," said Brown. "You will please to bear in mind that this is a free country, and it is a lasting disgrace to Victoria that she refuses admission to any foreigner. The government of Great Britain might as well attempt to exclude certain people or classes from the asylum of her shores."
"No, sir," replied Moffatt, "there it does not signify. Her own population would more than counterbalance any influx; but here it is different. The news of our gold fields, spread by rumour, and the return of successful diggers to China, have generated a spirit of adventure in that country which shows itself in the emigration of swarms of her people to our shores. Already as many as sixty thousand Chinamen are in Victoria; and they being acknowledged an inferior and by no means desirable class of settlers, even if they remained, it was deemed expedient to stop or at least check their immigration. As the complaint was desperate, so, necessarily, was the remedy. As you say their entrance into the country could not be prohibited, so the tax was levied on them to discourage their coming."
"And I think it was a most iniquitous tax," said Brown. "It has been urged against the Chinamen that they consume nothing but rice, and that on the diggings they are in the way of British colonization. Now it is a proverbial fact that they are ousted from all good 'claims;' which, if of any value, are instantly 'jumped' by the diggers, while the poor Chinamen are forced to take up the abandoned and worked out 'claims,' where Europeans have found a continuation of labour unprofitable. On the yield from these holes they manage to live, so it is evident that instead of their being a curse to the country, as has been affirmed, they are positively a benefit; for the gold, if they do take any out of the country, is only that which, but for them, would never have been extracted from the earth."
"That is a perfect fallacy," replied the other; "Chinamen will no more work on bad ground than white men; and as to their working abandoned 'claims' that is a thing that is done every day now; for formerly, when the diggings were in their glory, claims yielding what would now be considered 'paying quantities,' were thrown up by their holders for some more promising ground. But in these times diggers are content to try over all the old ground; so the assertion that the practice is confined to the Chinese is fallacious."
"However, be it as it may," said Brown, "the Chinese have a perfect right to come here if they please; and I should like to see them landing in Moreton Bay in as many thousands as they do in Melbourne. Then we should have an opportunity of getting shepherds, whereas now we experience considerable difficulty. Some of the settlers on the northern part of the coast have for sometime agitated the question of the introduction of coolie or Chinese labour into those parts; arguing that the climate is admirably adapted for the growth of cotton and sugar, though too tropical for the European to labour at agriculture in the sun. It would, however suit those accustomed to such a temperature; and without them the resources of the country will never be developed. I perfectly agree with them, and think the introduction of some cheap labour, such as that, would be of immense advantage to the country."
"I must again differ from you, sir," said the stranger; "their introduction would be of incalculable mischief to the entire colony."