Majesty’s Government. While, whoever, Her Majesty’s Government sympathized with the object of the memorials, they were reluctant to refuse the Royal sanction to some of the Bills objected to in the memorials. The encouragement, obtained from the more or less successful issue of their first and test experiments to carry out the final object, has resulted in the formation by the Europeans, during the last seven months, of anti-Indian associations, and the question has assumed a very acute phase. Under the circumstances, your Memorialists, in the interests of the Indian community in Natal, feel it to be their duty to place a review of the last seven months’ anti-Indian agitation before Her Majesty’s Government.
On the 7th April, 1896, the Tongaat Sugar Company applied to the Immigration Trust Board, indenting for the following Indian artisans—one each: brick-layer, plate-layer, plasterer, house-painter, carriage-builder, wheelwright, carpenter, blacksmith, fitter, turner, iron-moulder, and coppersmith. The Trust Board granted the application. As soon as this information was published in the newspapers, a storm of protest arose of the Colony. Meetings to protest against the action of the Trust Board were advertised for in the local papers, both in Pietermaritzburg and Durban. The first meeting was held in Durban, on the 11th day of August, and is reported to have been largely attended, where angry speeches were made. As a result of the agitation, the Tongaat Sugar Company withdrew their application in the following terms: “As our application for the above appears to have met with an opposition entirely unforeseen on our part, we have decided to withdraw it.” The agitation, however, did not die with the withdrawal. Meetings continued to be held and the speakers went beyond the scope thereof. Your memorialists humbly think that the protest against the application was perfectly justified, in so far as the introduction of skilled labour under State protection was contemplated; and that, had the agitation remained within proper bounds, the events that followed might not have taken place. Some of the speakers at those meetings laid stress on the fact that the Indians could not fairly be blamed in the matter, and that it was the Sugar Company that was entirely to blame. The tone, however, of most of the speeches was such as to easily inflame the passions of the audience. The correspondence in the newspapers also was carried on much the same way. Facts were at a heavy discount; the whole Indian question was opened up; and Indians were condemned wholesale. The meetings, in your Memorialists’ humble opinion,
