| <The Saturday Review Sept. 28, 1861>
| <The Rights of Labour at the Antipodes>
| <pb n="318">
| The English strikes have accustomed us to that view 
| of the Rights of Labour which interprets them to 
| mean the right of preventing other men from 
| labouring. But, like many other English opinions, it is 
| only moderately carried out in practice here.  Among 
| us the rights of labour do not prescribe anybody; but 
| their requirements are satisfied if, by pressure legal or 
| illegal, every rival is brought under the obedience of 
| the Trades Unions.  To see the principles in full 
| blossom, which in England are only germinating, it is 
| generally necessary to turn to a colonial community.  
| In those new countries everything comes more 
| quickly to maturity, and false principles blossom into 
| political dangers with terrible rapidity.  Some recent 
| proceedings in New South Wales present us with the 
| picture of the rights of labour in a state of advanced 
| development.  They give us an instructive indication 
| of the sort of political economy that would prevail 
| among ourselves if Mr. GEORGE POTTER were a 
| trifle more powerful than he is.
| Among the various nationalities that were drawn 
| together from all parts of the world to the Australian 
| gold-fields, there arrived a considerable number of 
| Chinese from Hong Kong.  These people were very 
| successful in their mining, and the reports they carried 
| home stimulated numbers of their countrymen to 
| follow their example.  They have not shown 
| themselves other than peaceable visitors.  No crimes 
| of theft or violence are charged against them; and 
| they appear to follow the laborious pursuit upon 
| which they are engaged with more than ordinary 
| energy and skill.  It is alleged against them, indeed, 
| that they are dirty, and that they are immoral; and 
| <reg orig="every one"> everyone </reg> will feel 
| how such failings must shock the fastidious 
| cleanliness and virgin purity of an Australian digger.  
| But they are also guilty of another very serous offence; 
| and that is, that they share with the European diggers 
| the profits of the gold-field.  Its area is limited, and 
| therefore its average yield to each person is clearly 
| curtailed by every addition to the number of labourers; 
| and the European feels that his scantier profits are due 
| to the presence of the Chinese.  Which of the two 
| offences has made the Chinese to be unsavoury in the 
| nostrils of the European diggers is of course a moot 
| point in the colony.  The democratic papers loudly 
| maintain that the diggers are actuated solely by a 
| jealousy for the seventh commandment, and a high 
| appreciation of soap and water.  The papers on the 
| other side maliciously insinuate that the exquisite 
| sensitiveness of their modesty has been marvellously 
| quickened by the sight of the promising <p> "claims" 
| </p> which the Chinese are industriously digging.  
| Whichever feeling preponderates, it has of late found 
| a very practical expression.  So unanimous are the 
| miners, either in their horror of immorality or their 
| hatred of successful rivals, that in the middle of July 
| last, the whole of the diggers working at one of the 
| chief gold fields assembled together and marched 
| upon the Chinese.  The wretched strangers, even 
| according to the reluctant testimony of the advocates 
| of the diggers, <q> </q>, stripped of every shred of 
| property, and driven in a mass, in a state of abject 
| destitution, to a distant cattle station.  Against this 
| oppression there is no appeal for them.  The utter 
| impotence of the law in the face of any mob, which is 
| the mark of all democratic constitutions, has been 
| brought painfully to light.  No attempt even to 
| reinstate the Chinese in the possession of their 
| property, or to protect them from further outrage, has 
| been made by the Government.  Probably any such 
| vindication of the law is an impossibility.  A modest 
| attempt on the part of the authorities to arrest three of 
| the most prominent rioters turned the whole mob 
| furiously upon the Government.  The three rioters 
| were released, the authorities decamped, and the mob 
| remain masters of the field.
| This is bad enough, but it is far from being the worst.  
| The class from whom the Burrangong rioters are 
| drawn are, the rulers of New South Wales, and their 
| lawless excesses are viewed with very mild 
| disapprobation by the section of public opinion which 
| gives law to the colony.  Already it is proposed to 
| give legal effect to the object of these outrages, and to 
| complete by a statute what the diggers have begun 
| with their revolvers.  The democratic party have 
| raised a cry for the legal exclusion of Chinamen from 
| New South Wales.  To that cry it is probable that the 
| PRIME MINISTER will not be wholly deaf.  The 
| heights of power are more slippery at Sydney than 
| even here:  and Mr. COWPER'S footing is 
| notoriously very insecure.  He is likely to grasp at any 
| support from any quarter that may promise him a 
| respite of official life.  It is not, therefore, impossible 
| that an English colony may, in the nineteenth century, 
| retort upon the Chinese that policy of exclusion which 
| has made them a byword among nations, and has 
| usually been supposed to be the peculiar product of 
| ignorance and barbarism.  If this policy concerned 
| them alone, it need excite among us no stronger 
| feeling than curiosity.  If it were being carried out at 
| San Francisco or New York, it would merely suggest 
| reflections upon the economical results of entrusting 
| political mastery to an uneducated class.  Assuredly, 
| protection to native industry was never carried to such 
| a length in the darkest feudal days.  But it concerns us 
| much more nearly than as a matter of simple 
| speculation.  Though, in practice, there is little else 
| left of Australia's dependence upon England than the 
| name and the cost of an unreal sovereignty, we are yet, 
| in the eyes of foreign Powers, responsible for the acts 
| of the Governments over which the QUEEN 
| nominally rules.  England has a credit to support, 
| which, unhappily, it is in the power of Australia to 
| impeach.  To take the lowest ground, her influence 
| will be seriously impaired if it comes to be generally 
| believed that, unless she is moved to do so by interest 
| or by fear, she never thinks of observing in practice 
| the principles which she preaches so ostentatiously to 
| others.  It is, even in a material point of view, a 
| serious loss to a nation if she is regarded as an 
| inveterate hypocrite.  Yet what other construction can 
| be put upon our conduct, if we denounce 
| exclusiveness at Hong Kong and practice it at Sydney 
| ~~ if our armies claim free immigration as the 
| common right of all men in China, while our own 
| Governor in Australia is repudiating it in the case of 
| the Chinese?  If only their own internal polity was 
| concerned, <reg orig="no one"> no-one </reg> would 
| grudge to the inhabitants of New South Wales the 
| peculiar political luxuries in which they take pleasure.  
| If they like to have their laws dictated to them by a 
| mob, and to suffer protection in its most odious form 
| ~~ the prohibition of the import of labour ~~ to be 
| reintroduced among them, it is no business of ours to 
| interfere.  The assailants at Burrangong are merely
| <pb n="319">
| a Trades Union on a large scale, and freed from legal 
| restraint.  The Unions at Manchester used to employ 
| oil of vitriol to rid them of their rivals, and at 
| Sheffield they still blow up their antagonists in their 
| own houses with mines secretly constructed.  
| Advancing with revolvers against even a body of 
| Chinese is decidedly a nobler system of warfare than 
| the use either of oil of vitriol or gunpowder petards.  
| If the New South Wales people choose that their 
| Government should be so feeble that the <p> "right of 
| labour" </p> can be enforced at will by any body of 
| labourers who can master revolvers enough for the 
| purpose, it would be very gratuitous in England to 
| interfere with so paradoxical a taste.  But the very 
| condition of their existence as a dependency is that 
| they should not trench upon question of international 
| policy.  China happens to be the one country with 
| which we are under engagements, implied if not 
| express, with respect to the mutual immigration of the 
| subjects of the two Crowns.  It is earnestly to be 
| hoped that the QUEEN will never be advised to 
| consent to any measure of the Colonial Parliament 
| which may incur the suspicion of sharp practice in 
| this respect. The Emperor of CHINA is not in a 
| condition, even if he were inclined, to resent or 
| criticise any measures we may take with respect to his 
| emigrant subjects.  But unfair influence to the 
| principles which we have produced in <?> with him 
| will not be the less disgraceful because he certainly is 
| not able, and probably does not care to <?> it.  No 
| regard for the independence of the colonies can 
| justify us in tolerating the dishonour of two <?> 
| foreign policies pursued simultaneously on behalf of 
| the same Empire and in the name of the same 
| QUEEN.  Whatever the value of Australian 
| allegiances may be to England, it certainly will not 
| repay a slur on her good name.