Australasian Chronicle (Sydney, NSW : 1839 - 1843)(about) |
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Saturday 21 January 1843
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2 corrections, most recently by Perry.Middlemiss - Show corrections
COOLIE LABOR. SONNET, BY HENRY HALLORAN. Our flockmasters aloud for Coolies* cry - Not with the hope, magnanimous and bold, That they may win them to the Christian fold, From the dark errors of their heathen stye, But with an evil and blind tyranny, And wildly led by the mean thirst of gold, Would have the harmless Hindoo bought and sold, And made a slave beneath this glorious sky ! Oh ! ye foul tyrants! ye may loudly weep Your shrunken fortunes, and your failing state; But I can only grieve for suffering man; I have no sympathy with Dives's elan; The oppressor and wrong doer, I do hate, And all who balance human souls, and - sheep. * Were it not that the "auri sacra fames," like every other debasing passion, destroys the moral perceptions of its victims, it surely would have entered into the imaginations of the pious advocates of Coolie slavery, to conceive some scheme for converting to Christianity the Coolie heathens whom they would introduce; but it would have been humane -and expensive-and was not therefore to be thought of! The grand objection to the importation of Indian labor, as proposed, is, that it would inflict a great moral evil upon the colony, by introducing heathens who remain heathens; who would, in the nature of things, become serfs or slaves; and who, from their compulsory celibacy, would become utterly demo- ralised-evils pressing at the same time with a deadly weight upon the Coolies themselves. Secondary, but far beneath this in importance, is the consideration that it would unfairly de- preclate the value of European labor; the proposed good re- sulting from it, being, the improvement of our commerce, and our increased opulence. Better, however, that our commerce should languish-that our country should remain poor-nay that we should be "steeped in poverty to the very lips," than that we should inflict deeds of injustice and oppression upon any, even the meanest and most helpless of the human race. H. H.