The Coolie Trade; or, the Excomienda System of the Nineteenth Century [pp. 296-321]

302 THIE COOLIE TRADE.
occurring among emigrants on the passage from Great Britain
to New-York, we find it eighIt times greater; or if, with that
among emigrants to Australia, a voyage of more than double
the length of that of the Coolies, it is about three times greater.*
After entering service, it appears, that, of the above 81,170
Coolies (now reduced by mortality on shipboard and in hospital to 79,413), the deaths, during the nine years, commencing
w~ith 1842 and ending in November, 1849, amounted to 7,636t
or one tenth of the whole number, a large mortality, when it
is considered tkat the majority of these persons are men in the
prime of life, and at that age when the expectation of life is
longest. But further, the deaths every year exceed the births;
in 1852 this excess was 751; in 18.53 it was 626. The reduction of population from this cause will be more apparent
when we consider that in countries more favorably situated,
about onle half of all the children born, die before reaching
their fifth year, and two thirds before reaching their fiftecnth,?
so that the probability is, that hardly any of these lndian children attain adult age; and this inference is strengthened from
the fact that while 4,833 children are returned as having emigrated to the colony up to November, 1849, and perhaps as
many more from that time to 1855 (few having returned),
yet the committee on education estimate the number of children under fourteen at the latter period, at only 5,600!
Considering, then, the great mortality of the resident.populaion, the very small number of births, and the deaths that
must occur among this number before adult age, it is evident
that if it were not for the constant introduction of twelve to
fifteen thousand immigrants annually, in other words if the
people were left as they are at this moment, that in a very
few years they would become extinct, and the island revert to
a desert state!
Let it not be suvposed that we wish to undervalue what is
really free labor; we wish to expose this unnatural and cruel
system which has adopted this specious name in order to hide
from humanity evils worse than those of Spanish slavery, and
equal, we fully believe, to those which so rapidly destrvoyed a
* The mortality in one hundred and four ships, carrying 42,35I emigrants to New-York, in
1855, was less than one quarter of one per cent.; and in twenty-five other vessels g,ing to
other ports of the Unitet States, it w:s only one tenth of one per cent. Of 20,958 emigrants
to Australia, the deaths were under three quarters of one per cent.-Par. Reports, 1856.
t Rep. Emn. Commissioners, 18 50. Four hundred and fifty Coolies were sent back to India,
as unfit for seraice; and over 7,000 were returned at their own request, before the expiration
of their contra t. Deserters from labor weae also n merous.
According to Dr. Price's tat,les, o se half the childr,l born in London died under three
years of age; in Vienna and Stockholm, under two years; in Manchester, under five. But
the mortality in these countries is not so great now.