also, it would be contrary to the universal experience of mankind, to believe that they can be happy, when it is known, that the parties who introduced them into that colony, were influenced only by the sordid purposes of gain, and by the avowed intention of coercing the labour, and of keeping down the wages of the Negroes in a state of freedom.
3. As the Committee would earnestly deprecate the further introduction of Hill Coolies into any of the emancipated colonies, as fraught with the most injurious consequences morally as well as otherwise, to the existing labouring population, and as, therefore, calculated immeasurably to impede their advance in civilization and religion; they would respectfully submit to your Lordship that, on this ground also, the Mauritian planters are least of all fit to be entrusted with the care of the ignorant and degraded natives of Hindostan, inasmuch as they have shown themselves not only utterly regardless of, but entirely opposed to the education of their late slaves in morals and religion.
4. The Committee are firmly persuaded that the proposed measure, instead of inducing the Mauritian planters to act upon just and equal laws, and to depend on the exercise of humane treatment and good faith towards their present labourers, for the cultivation of their estates, will cause them to rely on unjust and adventitious expedients for the accomplishment of their objects, and will have the effect of reviving the traffic in the persons of men which no enactments in this country, however humanely intended, can prevent, or even control. It appears also to the Committee, that the necessary consequence of the relaxation of the restrictions on the exportation of Coolies to Mauritius, must lead to a similar measure in favour of British Guiana and Trinidad; an event, which they would greatly deplore, as fatal to the interests of humanity and destructive of the hopes they have cherished in connexion with the freedom of the slave.
5. The pretence that the natives of India would be benefited by the proposed measure, the Committee venture respectfully to deny. In order effectually to relieve the suffering and oppressed Hindoos, they humbly conceive a series of enlightened, humane, and comprehensive laws must be substituted for those which exist; and the present system of mis-government be entirely abandoned. All partial expedients to relieve the misery which so extensively prevails in that vast country, can, in their judgement, only have the effect of retarding the introduction of those searching reforms which the exigen-