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The question has often been asked me of late what attitude does the Wesleyan Mission assume towards Federation? My answer has been: As a Mission, no attitude at all. The Wesleyan Mission, as a Mission, is neutral in politics. But, while the Mission wisely, as I think, maintains an attitude of neutrality, and is not likely, in its corporate capacity, to express any opinion on Federation, this does not prevent individual members of the Mission staff from holding and expressing an opinion either for or against it. In setting forth, therefore, my own views on Federation, as it may affect the native population of Fiji, I wish it to be understood that I write only on my own behalf, and am not committing the Mission to which I belong to any particular set of opinions, much less to any course of action.

The stand-point from which I wish to discuss the question is that of a person whose only reason for being in Fiji at all is the welfare of the natives, and who views Federation, not as it may affect the commercial interests of the European population, but, as it bears on the condition and prospects of the Fijians themselves.

What would be the effect of Federation on them? To answer this question it is necessary to ask another. Has the present Crown Colony Covernment proved so successful in its relation to the natives that it ought to be perpetuated? Let us review the situation.

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For several reasons Fiji is an interesting country to the student of political economy. Nowhere else is afforded the opportunity of watching an experiment in governing such as we witness here, and there is nothing so valuable as practical experiments in estimating the worth of theories. For that reason I have watched carefully the progress of government in this country. I have never been one of those whose chief recreation lies in the abuse of the Government, and who are by long habit unable to distinguish between good and bad. It has been my aim to judge calmly and dispassionately, and to view affairs from the point of those who are responsible for the administration of the Government. The following are the result of my observations:—

1. The Fiji Government has committed itself to the maintenance of the communal system. When the cession of the group took place a sort of communal system was found in existence. It would, perhaps, be more correct to say that it was a despotism in which the chiefs were the tyrants. They held sole possession of the lives and property of the population, while the mass of the people were communal in complete subservience to the chiefs. It seemed easy for the new Government to extend and crystallize this system. It was much easier than to face the problem of emancipating the people from its thraldom, and so grew up a code of Ordinances whose effect has been to give the chance communism of the old Fiji all the force of law in the new. I assume, for the sake of brevity, that my readers are sufficiently informed concerning the present communal system to obviate the necessity of my entering into greater detail. To this system the Fiji Government is committed, and to all appearances irrevocably committed. I venture to say that the perpetuation of the communal system has been a great mistake.

Those who know natives well, know that what they most lack, and what, if they are ever to be true men, they must somehow acquire, are the qualities of mind and soul that are expressed in the word "character." But character is just what the natives have not. We, who work for and among them, know, too painfully, how deficient in all manly qualities they are. Courage, honour, firmness, pure ambition, truthfulness, unselfishness—these and kindred qualities are all too rare. Let me say here that the natives are not generally hypocrites, as many thoughtlessly, say; they mean well, but page 48 being deficient in character they are weak and the victims of circumstances. They do mentally and morally what many others, not only natives, do—temporarily live from hand to mouth, and so are mere opportunists, whose conduct, under the ordinary circumstances of life may never be foretold.

But environment has everything to do with growth of character. Place any number of men in situations requiring certain qualities of mind and the axoim will be verified that occasions produce the men to deal with them. The vital objection to Socialism is that it obliterates individuality, and Communism is only another name for Socialism. Herd men together like sheep, take away from them all incentive and ambition, impose on them a legal code that stops all outlet for individual effort, stifle all expressions of individual opinion, and the result, most assuredly, will be the annihilation of all character and the production of a placid race of mental and moral invertebrates.

This has been the result of the communal system developed and perpetuated by the Fiji Government. The policy of the Wesleyan Mission in its synods and church courts has been to promote individualism among the natives. Freedom of discussion, room for the exercise of judgment and a share in the legislation and administration of ecclesiastical affairs, these have always been conceded. The policy of the Government has been, and is now, more than ever the direct opposite of this. The Councils are a mere matter of form and are dominated by officials, and the will of the people always gives place to the personal will of the Governor. Freedom of discussion and the expression of private opinion are effectively checked by such laws as that of Vakatubuca, an Ordinance wide enough to catch even the most wary. In such environment a nation of men cannot be formed. It is not being formed in Fiji.

2. The communal system is bound up with the maintenance of the poll tax. I do the Government no wrong when I say the natives are governed principally in the interests of that tax. When I read the report of the Commission on the decrease of the native population, I was struck with the use of the argument that it was desirable to preserve the native race because its extinction meant a serious loss of revenue to the Government. We are witnessing just now a new departure in the operations of the Provincial Inspectors. I have good page 49 reason for saying that the work of those Inspectors is regulated to suit the exigencies of the poll tax. If an Inspector, whose mind rises a bit above filling up ditches and erecting bamboo fences, suggests any radical measure for the improvement of the natives he is met by the objection that his proposal might interfere with the poll tax. And what do we see, therefore? That the people are being brought in off the land and huddled together in villages of area so limited that conversation in one house may be overheard in the next, and the inhabitants are not able to keep a domestic animal, not even a militant rooster and his attendant hens. Villages are removed from the fertile valleys and placed on the rood sides; a village at all roomy is contracted, and all to make the people more easily get-at-able, in the interests chiefly of the poll tax. For the same reason the natives are bound to their villages most of the year, and it has come to pass that, though we have in Fiji upwards of 35,000 able-bodied men, planters and traders needing a few weeks or days of casual labor frequently cannot obtain a man. In travelling through the interior of Viti Levu, I have been painfully impressed by the lovely fertile lands all desolate of people, while the owners are compelled to congregate in small villages, and it has been more than once forced on my mind that the true policy would be to replace the present officials—estimable gentlemen they are, too, mostly—by men who can use both head and hands to scatter the people in small holdings over their country and teach them to become crofters. It could be done, and the country would be then enriched by a native race possessing property, and the race itself, tasting the joy of possession, would strive further to acquire, and have an incentive to live that is now denied them.

3. The natives' have been and are still compelled to do large amounts of free labor on roads and other public works from which they personally derive very small benefit. The whole of the road from Nadroga to Viti Levu Bay was made by forced, unpaid native labor. The road from Tavua to Suva, through the percipitous mountains of the interior; the road from Ba which junctions the Tavua road at Nadarivatu, the road from Ba to Fort Carnarvon and through Navosa to Nadarivatu; the road from Viti Levu Bay that junctions the main road at Nubumakita, and many others too numerous to mention, were all, with few exceptions, made under compulsion by the natives, who got not a penny of remuneration and fed themselves into the bargain. And all this in addition to the poll tax and Customs duties. The hand of the Governmont has been heavy indeed on the native population. Roads are desirable, but they should be paid for, not done for nothing, under compulsion, by one class of people already too heavily taxed.

4. For the maintenance of the communal system and the poll tax, the Fiji Government has woven about the natives a web of legislation that has been the grave of all liberty. Take Lawa ni Talaidredre and Lawa ni Vakatubu ca. In these two Ordinances alone the Government has forged for itself and its officials, English and native, most effective instruments shall I say—of oppression. The Government did not mean to oppress, but it has oppressed, nevertheless. Both the above Ordinances were very dangerous weapons to place in the hands of native officials. During my residence in these islands I have been the indignant witness of many arbitrary and oppressive acts done by their means.

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During a recent journey through the interior of Viti Levu I met an old man under police escort, on his way to Suva gaol. Happening to know him and also his family, I enquired the reason of his imprisonment. It was Vakatubu ca on two grounds. First, as town chief he opposed the appropriation of a piece of ground for tax purposes (poll tax again) for the reason that it was required for planting food. Secondly, he opposed the removal of his village and the union of its people with another village. In this case one Provincial Inspector ordered the breadfruit trees to be cut down, and when that was done another Inspector decided to remove the village altogether. The old man opposed this, was charged with Vakatubu ca, and is now putting in six months for his courage. I met him on the way. He suffers from a complaint that makes walking a real torture, and this old man was sent staggering over the mountains from Rakiraki to Suva although he could have been sent round by steamer for 10s. To my thinking he has done nothing at all worthy of punishment. But that is where I think the Fiji Government has involved itself in a course that makes tyranny a necessity. To perpetuate Communism and maintain the poll tax Lawa ni Talaidredre and Lawa ni Vakatubu ca are essential, and it follows that conduct, for which we applaud our Pyms, our Hampdens, our Cobdens, and our Wilberforces, becomes an indictable offence in Fiji. If Gladstone had been a Fijian, instead of his country sending him back to Parliament with an overwhelming following for denouncing the Government's cynical apathy over Bulgarian atrocities we should have seen him in a prisoner's procession in the streets of Suva, with hair cropped close and wearing a sulu plentifully besprinkled with broad arrows.

The Fiji Government has deprived the natives of all liberty. They pay about 40 per cent, of their gross income to the Treasury in addition to unpaid labor, yet they have no franchise and no representation. Their Councils are under Government tutelage, one man, and one only, holds them in his hand, and when it happens that the hand is metallic and unsympathetic the natives are to be pitied. In Fiji, a young man who feels the village boundaries to be too strait for him, and his aspirations and ambitions to attain to something above the rank of a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water, is met at the outset by an inflexible communal system that holds him in a relentless grip. He would be a carpenter or a page 53 blacksmith; he would possess his own cottage and live on the fruits of his own labour, or he would seek for education and become in time the teacher of his fellows. But the commune says: "No, I need you to help meet my obligation; if you go who will work for the poll tax; who will make the roads? The employment you desire and the freedom they imply are not for you but for Europeans, Indians, Polynesians, &c., you must banish all thought of them; this little village is your world, stray beyond it at your peril, do not call yourself a mail. Helot is your name, because men are free and you fire bound. You may fret against the barriers, but my system must go on." And so Fijian young men may not choose their path in life, nor avail themselves of opportunities that occur to them of learning trades. They may be broken in the process, but the communal system must be maintained.

5. The Fiji Government has made itself an object of hatred and dread to the natives—it rules by fear. It's foolish anxiety to regulate every detail of native life has led to the multiplication of Ordinances that hedge the native round like the spikes ill a regulus barrel. The most law-abiding and well-meaning native can scarcely hope to pass through life without making frequent appearances before magistrates, to answer charges that in other countries would not be thought offences. It would be interesting to see a table for one year of punishments inflicted for offences against the Ordinances that uphold the communal and tax system. The present Governor wrote in a well-remembered message of the sheaves of Ordinances he found in Fiji. It cannot be said, however, that the burden of these sheaves has been made any lighter by the appointment of inspectors, whose mere word, backed by Lawa ni Talaidredre becomes a law; who, knowing of, or caring less for, the customs and feelings of the people, ride rough-shod over them, and who, being foolishly elated by the absolute power bestowed upon them, make occasions to use it.

The government of the natives has become a mere tyranny (I use this word in its original sense), and the greatest discontent is felt in a large part of the country. But this discontent is mostly voiceless; Lawa ni Yakatubu ca compels it to be dumb. If the test of successful government is found in the wealth and happiness it places within reach of its subjects the Fiji Government has miserably failed.

My conclusion, therefore, is that the natives of this country page 54 have found the present form of Goverment anything hut a blessing, and that the Government itself has been a huge and ghastly failure. The Government has not gone the right way to raise characterful people; it has rather succeeded in reducing all to one helpless level, and, though the new inspectorship will give us clean villages, I am of the opinion that they have got hold of the "wrong end of the stick," and that the true redemptive policy would be to break up the tribal and communal system, place the people under efficient directorship back on the land, help them to acquire useful animals and property, and instead of bringing in Indians to fill our vacant areas, teach our own natives to become settlers. That would be a policy worthy of an enlightened Government, and in the end it would make the Fijians worth more to the Treasury than they are now.

Now let us look at the attitude of the New Zealand Government to the Maoris.

In the past New Zealand made its own mistakes in dealing with its aboriginal population, and for these it has paid the price. It has also learned wisdom from its mistakes, and no one can now charge that colony with unfairness towards the Maoris.

1.	The Maoris have Parliamentary representation.
2.	They have the franchise.
3.	They pay no poll tax but their equitable share of other imports.
4.	An Act preventing private dealings (in land) gives them secure possession of their lands and ensures a just price. Government alone buys Maori land.
5.	The Maoris are free.
6.	The Maori enjoys the benefit of free education.
7.	The Maoris do no unpaid forced labor on the roads and public works.
8.	The Maoris are not enmeshed in fussy irritating legislation.
9.	The Maoris do not suffer from a plague of English and native officials.

I conclude, therefore, that the Fijian natives have nothing to lose, but a great deal to gain, from a Federation that would page 55 free them from a Government whose hand is as ubiquitously heavy as that of the present Crown Colony, and whoso expensiveness leads to the reversal of the principles on which equitable taxation is based, and causes the heaviest burden to fall on the poor.

It would be worthwhile to work for Federation, if only as a way of obtaining opportunities for the discussion of the native affairs, and of escape from the truculent discourtesy that seems always to have been, as it is now the predominant feature of Crown Colony Governments.