Sugar, and nothing but sugar, is to be seen in this island. Every undertaking has reference to sugar, and all the conversation is about sugar. Mauritius might be called the sugar island, and its coat of arms should be a bundle of sugar-canes and three sugar-bags rampant.
During a residence of some weeks I had opportunities of observing the condition and circumstances of the laborers. They are called “coolies,” and come, as I have mentioned, from all parts of India. They hire themselves for five years, and the planter who hires them has to give each laborer 8s. or 10s. a month, 50 lbs. of rice, 4 lbs. of dried fish, 4 lbs. of beans, 4 lbs. of fat or oil, a sufficiency of salt, and a little hut to live in, besides the sum he has to pay to the government for their passage.
The laborer’s condition is not nearly so good as that of a servant. He has to work heavily in the cane-field and the boiling-house, and is much more exposed than the domestic servant to the arbitrary power of his master; for he may not leave until his five years’ contract has expired. He may certainly go and complain if he is hardly used, for there are judges to hear, and laws to redress his woes; but as the judges are frequently planters themselves, the poor laborer seldom finds the verdict given in his favor. The laborer has also frequently to walk eight or ten miles before he gets to the court. In the week he has no time to go, and on Sundays he finds it closed. If, after much trouble, he at length succeeds in reaching the abode of justice, he finds, perhaps, that the court is engaged in a multiplicity of affairs, and is told to go and come again some other day. To make the thing more difficult for him, he is not admitted at all unless he brings witnesses. How is he to get these? None of his companions in misfortune will dare to render him such a service, for fear of punishment, or even corporal ill usage at the hands of his master.
I will relate an incident which happened during my residence in the Mauritius.
On one of the plantations ten laborers wished, upon the expiration of their contract, to quit their employer and take service with another. The planter heard of this, and three weeks before the articles of these ten men expired, he persuaded ten others to give in the papers of the malcontents as their own, and to have the contract renewed for a year. Then he called the discontented laborers separately before him, showed each one the contract, and told him he had another year to serve. Of course the people persisted that this was impossible, as they had not been at the court at all, and had never had the writing in their hands. The planter replied that the contract was perfectly valid, and declared that if they complained before the court they would not be heard, and that corporal chastisement would most likely be their reward. Moreover, if they went, he would not pay the wages he owed them for five months’ work, unless under compulsion.
The poor fellows were at a loss what to do. Fortunately, an official of high position lived close by, and one who was known as an honest, philanthropic man. To him they went, told their story, and begged his protection, which he at once promised. The affair came before the court, but the trial went on very slowly, as none of the planter’s people dared to give evidence. Even if they had the will, it would have been difficult for them to do so, as the planter forbade his people to go out, and had them carefully watched and prevented from communicating with any one all the time the action was proceeding.
In the course of some ten weeks, five sittings or hearings took place. The first three were held before a single judge, who was a planter into the bargain. The protector of the poor plaintiffs insisted that three judges should be appointed, as the law demands, and protested against the one judge, who could not but appear as influenced by his position as a planter. As this demand proceeded from a man in a high position, and was, moreover, strictly legal, it was complied with, and the first judge only attended the two subsequent sittings to give explanations respecting the former three.
At the fifth sitting the action was certainly decided in favor of the coolies, but the verdict was given in a manner I should never have thought possible in a land under English rule.
The judge, or planter, who had heard the plaintiffs in the first three sittings declared that when the ten people first came to him, he could not know whether they were the real proprietors of the papers, for that hundreds of laborers came to him with similar complaints every day.
He had written out the new contract on unstamped paper, as he happened to have none with a stamp by him, and the people, not one of whom could write, had attached their crosses as signatures. Afterward he had the contract rewritten on stamped paper, as it would otherwise have been invalid, and in order not to call up the people again, his clerk had affixed the crosses. As the people had, therefore, not signed with their own hands, the contract was void, and the coolies were free; and thus the action was decided.