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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 76

The Respectful Memorial of the Under-Signed Sheweth—

The Respectful Memorial of the Under-Signed Sheweth

1. Your Memorialists are a Committee nominated by the inhabitants of Suva in public meeting assembled for the purpose of bringing about the Incorporation of Fiji with New Zealand.

2. A Petition having that object in view was presented on behalf of this colony to the Speaker and House of Representatives so long ago as the year 1885, but did not then meet with a favorable reply. (A copy of that petition is hereto appended.) A period of fifteen years has elapsed since the presentation of that Petition to the Parliament of New Zealand: but the disabilities and the grievances therein set forth still remain unremoved and unredressed. And your Memorialists once again, in the name of the people of Suva, appeal to New Zealand.

3. Since the date of the Petition above referred to, the numbers of the white population of Fiji have grown by natural increase and otherwise, and at present exceeds 4000 persons according to the latest Government Blue Book, During the same period the general population has been increased by the importation of immigrants from British India page x as labourers on the great sugar plantations which are established in this colony. The number of such immigrants now approximates 15,000.

4. With deep regret your Memorialists find themselves obliged to state that during the period referred to there has been a grave decrease in the native Fijian population. Numbering, in the year 1885, approximately, 115,000, the Native Fijian Race has now dwindled down to 98,000 or thereabout, a decrease of 17,000 in fifteen years.

5. Various causes are from time to time put forward to explain away responsibility for the condition of the native race. Your Memorialists, however, assert without hesitation, that the Government of Fiji is unable to rid itself of responsibility for the present condition of the Fijians. The decrease in population is directly attributable to the specially oppressive system of Government applied to them, and to the excessive burden of taxation to which under that system they are subjected.

The accompanying memorandum by the Rev. W. Slade, a "Wesleyan Missionary among the Fijians of many years' experience, supports the views expressed in this regard by your Memorialists, and is a very powerful indictment of the grinding communal system under which the native Fijians are, against their will, compelled to live.

Your Memorialists assert that the charges and allegations made by the Rev. W. Slade are in no way exaggerated, and your Memorialists would welcome the appointment of a Royal Commission to enquire into such charges and allegations, and generally into the causes for the present condition of the native race.

6. Not only are the native inhabitants governed under a system of personal Government which retards the moral and injures the physical development of the race, but the white inhabitants of the colony, who are for the most part New Zealanders and Australians, and their descendants, are also subjected to personal government, are entirely deprived of all voice in the making of the laws under which they have to live, and are altogether unrepresented in the Legislature which levies the taxes which they have to pay. In the administration of public affairs the interests of the white inhabitants are page xi disregarded, and their wishes, though respectfully and constitutionally expressed, meet with curt and uncourteous refusal.

Recently the Governor has, in face of the unanimous opposition of the colonists, stopped the small subsidy of £1500, previously to his arrival paid to the Canadian-Australian Royal Mail line of steamers, with the result that the colony has lost the advantage of that means of communication between Australia and Europe, by way of Canada. Again, notwithstanding the earnest protests of the inhabitants of Suva, the Governor persists in retaining within the precincts of the town, and in close proximity to the dwelling houses of certain of the citizens, a Bubonic Plague Station and Leper Settlement. In the absence of representation in the Legislature the people of the colony are unable to place any check upon such arbitrary acts of the Executive, or upon such maladministration of public affairs.

7. The right of trial by jury, which is the birthright of every Englishmen, whether living in England or in a colony, and the only guarantee of freedom and upholding of personal rights, is curtailed in such a manner as to be practically denied to the colonists,

In civil cases the Chief Justice, who is the sole judge in the colony, sits without a jury. In such cases there is no appeal except to the Privy Council, and then only where the sum involved exceeds £500; which renders appeal practically prohibitive.

In criminal cases a jury is allowed only when both the complainant and the accused are whites; in all other cases (and such constitute the vast majority) the Chief Justice sits with Assessors, who are not allowed to find the verdict, but who merely deliver an opinion which the Chief Justice may at his discretion disregard.

8. Your Memorialists, therefore, earnestly pray that you will assist the people of this colony to free themselves from the form of Government under which they are now living, and obtain for them a Government in consonance with their rights as English born people, and one suitable to their wants and aspirations; and with that end in view that you will page xii obtain the sanction of the Imperial Government for the purpose of securing self-government for Fiji, with a view to the incorporation of Fiji with New Zealand as an integral portion of that colony.

7. The colony of Fiji is even now self-supporting, and practically without debt. Freed from the withering effects of arbitrary and irresponsible personal Government, the potentialities of this colony are such as to place it in the first rank among the tropical possessions of the Crown.

8. Your Memorialists confidently believe that the Federation of New Zealand and Fiji would result to the mutual advantage of both colonies.

And your Memorialists will ever pray.

F. E. Riemenschneider,

Warden of Suva.

Humphry Berkeley.

G. L. Griffiths.

W. T. Sturt.

F. A. Thomas.

H. Gardiner Hunt.

George

Fox.

Alport Barker,

Hon. Sec. Suva, Fiji.