In 1857, the population of the island amounted to 239,007 persons, consisting of:—
| General population | 55,794 |
| Ex-Apprentice ditto | 40,678 |
| Immigrant ditto | 142,534 |
Taxes have lately been much reduced; but the extending trade, larger production, and increasing population and wealth have raised the revenue of this thriving colony far beyond the expenditure.
The large amount of 79,500l. sterling is annually expended on immigration, while every means are taken to see the immigrant properly protected. In consequence of the competition among the planters for labour, a system of crimpage existed at Mauritius, when I visited that island, which was injurious to the best interests of the immigrant and his employer; the middle-men or crimps, who obtained the labourers on their arrival in the island, being the only parties benefited. While the expense of importing a labourer from India has cost a planter 6l. for the passage-money of the immigrant, I have known instances in which he was obliged to pay the crimp an additional 6l. to secure the immigrant—which, together with a further expense of 2l. for government fees, made each labourer placed on the estate, before he began to work, cost 14l.
By recent regulations enabling the planter to engage the immigrant in India, and making that engagement binding on their arrival at Mauritius, the crimpage system will now be done away with.
With regard to the treatment of the blacks, natives of India, or ex-apprentices, nothing could be more liberal, nor could freedom be more perfect than that which they enjoy.
I have been in many mixed communities, and have seen the black in Cuba, Jamaica, and all the other West India Islands, in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Mozambique, but I have never seen him enjoying a better position in the social circle than at Mauritius.
Soon after our arrival at Port Louis, we were invited to a coloured ball, at which the Governor and principal ladies of the island were guests; the dresses of the ladies, for beauty or costliness, could not have been surpassed in Paris or London; while the ceremonies of the ball-room and supper-table were conducted with the utmost decorum and grace.
The employers being so much at the mercy of the employed, the labouring classes are insolent in the extreme; and any amount of wealth does not secure the more opulent portion of the community from suffering from a want which no amount of money can purchase.
In the towns and on the plantations everywhere one hears the same complaint—the bad conduct of the servants. Coolies from Madras and Calcutta, who really are good servants, after a few months’ residence on the island, become lazy, insolent, and drunkards.