Alexander James Duffield

“ Man has made nothing so beautiful as a ship, but it is also the most helpless of things; a ship without wind is a body without a soul, and the time will come when, if these visits to the islands of the Coral Sea are to be continued, they will be made not in three-masted barquentines, but in vessels, to whom a breeze is no favour and a dead calm a great boon. ”

“ If I have in much sorrow, accused you of blame, it is with much more indignation that I accuse the Government of Queensland of interfering in the labour traffic in such a manner as to foster abuses, breed scandals, and induce the grossest outrages ever committed on human beings. ”

“ It is one of the greatest encouragements we can carry in our hearts to know that at the head and front of this world's industrial war, the brightest and best intellect the world possesses, sits enthroned in absolute command. The genius of Watt, Stephenson, Brunel, Faraday and the rest, has become the inheritance of every British home, directing its rule, regulating its mental and moral force, dictating what shall be done with our boys ”

“ But the discovery was not made in the interest of hoary superstition or classical art, and beautiful mythology, or Christian fanaticism, or vulgar family pride, or military genius, but by a happy necessity, in the interests of humanity. That long hidden gold gave commerce wings, under whose shadow the world might not only find rest from tyranny and Governmental interference, but an ever growing freedom in which every individual unit of the world, while rejoicing in a sweet perennial liberty, might yet find a freedom greater still by being bound to the world's increasing work. ”

“ Whether we are satisfied or not with Professor Seeley's solution of his own problem, the New World is ours at this moment—not by bloody war and the conquest of the sword, but by means of gentle peace and the triumphs of industry and commerce. The English race is master of all that Columbus and his companions discovered. The Americas and the Australias have come under the sway of the Anglo-Saxon. The influence of the Latin race, like the influence of the Latin religion, has ceased to rule, much less to over-awe the mind of man. ”

“ How is it that England, the head quarters of the great industrial war, whose field is the world, treats with marked coldness, indifference, and disdain, not only the United States, but every one of her great colonies as well? ”

“ Lastly, have you always been just in your dealing's with these children of the Coral Sea? It is astonishing, and to some, a thing unknown, that injustice kills. To many human beings injustice is more deadly than rats' bane or arsenic. The cause of much of the injustice which planters have meted out to their Islanders, is that in an insolent sense of their own religious as well as racial superiority, they have regarded the Islanders as heathen, and therefore, out of the pale of justice! ”

“ Knowledge is no longer confined to a privileged sect. There is no royal way to anything, much less to learning. Science, the glory and solace of the greatest minds, is everywhere on the side of humanity. ”

“ Had the discovery of Australian gold been made by George III., North America would still be the unhappy hunting ground of the savage, and German States and German kings and German queens and high serenities would now be as abundant as German silver, and the great world had gone idly-strutting about with nothing but bands of music for its leaders. Had the discovery been made by Napoleon the First, the world would have been made into a barracks, and we should all have been colonels or corporals, except the women, who would never have been anything save mere mothers and cooks. ”

“ Now having spent the best part of my life in the service of the people, and being filled with the spirit that cannot rest, the spirit that is ever on the watch to sing out "All's well," or "Take care," I lately went with a merry heart on a cruise in a "labour vessel" to the South Sea Islands, bent on seeing all that belongs to this traffic and in the interests of humanity and for the defence of the character of a British Colony, to report minutely on all through which I might pass. As the Government attorney appointed to that vessel I looked forward to an instructive and novel voyage. ”

“ Labour has so far advanced in intellect as to perceive that without capital labor is denuded of its ample fruition, and cannot achieve its greatest good. The dominant religions which fostered monopolies, enmities and strife have been undermined by that modern spirit of cooperation, which shows the interdependence of human beings on each other, and that the result of this co-operation must be the good of mankind. ”

“ You do not need any other illustration of that being true than the result of George III.'s madness, by which England lost her great North American colony, in order that the British race might find a wider expanse of freedom, and the river of English liberty should seek and find the ocean of manful independence, and humanity assume a dignity which it had never known till then. ”

“ Prove to yourselves that you have made this spiritual and moral discovery, and that the discovery gives you a passionate delight and satisfaction; you will have brought in a new industrial era, you will have solved the mystery of social life and give an absolutely intelligible reason for the continuity of human endeavour. ”

“ So that you may safely say the high result which humanity has achieved in freedom, knowledge, prescience, skill, and courage, is the force which directs and rules the industrial war whose field is the world ”

“ We are all concerned in the stern injustice now rampant in North Queensland, which, if it be not uprooted, will spread to the South. It will spread like thistle seed, and breed like rabbits. That is to say, if the injustice which I propose to lay stark before you be not abolished now, it will become so strong that you will never be able to abolish it. ”

“ When a Government does not make the administration of justice its one and only business, but is compelled to mix itself up with the people's business and issue regulations about how the people shall do their business, and when they shall do it and dictate what the people shall work at, the number of hands and feet they shall employ in their garden, and whether they shall be white or black and the wage that shall be given, chaos will have come into the industrial army, and the industrial army and the industrial war cannot go on. ”

“ The people have been deluded by the way the Government have carried out its none effective interference. This is what I have called an effectual snare. Had the interference of Government been real, earnest, or what it pretended to be, instead of being an organised hypocricy, the people would not have been deceived, the traffic might have been loyally conducted, and unreported outrages, and outrages, that have been too much reported, would not have been begun and systematically continued. ”

“ Although, if any rich planter, smitten with remorse for the way he has increased his substance, thinks fit to endow a college for teaching the English tongue to Islanders, and the Polynesian tongues to doctors, overseers, Government agents and others, we will not hinder him in carrying out his merciful intent, while he and his class shall be allowed the full benefit which may result from such an institution being founded. We will not allow the morrow to take thought for itself, but take care that what we do to-day shall lead to something better next morning. ”

“ When the sea which surrounds them is like liquid opal and the sun tips their peaks with gold, or bathes their valleys in purple, or paints their slopes in emerald green, you need the best words of the best poet to describe them. ”

“ Whatever may be thought of this theory, it certainly throws a new light on history, for it draws our attention from the petty ambitions of mere kings to the struggles and throes of humanity. We cease to care for the secrets of courts, and take no interest in the tricks of diplomacy, or the intrigues of politicians, but are brought face to face with man, as the agent who is responsible for the earth not being made a slaughter house, but a garden ”

“ Indeed the traffic in Islanders is so full of mystery, and surrounded by so much weakness, and inexperience, to say nothing of imbecility and prejudice on the one hand, and brutal selfishness on the other, that much care is needed in handling it, lest for one thing we be found, in an excess of zeal to be uprooting wheat while we go spudding up the tares. ”

“ They are a highly moral people, [I am not surprised at the laugh which greets this remark, because I know that when we are brought in close contact with a stranger and more brutal nature than our own, we succumb at once, and probably with pleasure.] They are possessed in a large degree of the industrial and fine arts. They are hard-working, ingenious, imitative, docile, cleanly—if you don't make them wear clothing; fond of music and dancing, laughter, making love, intriguing and theiving. The women are singularly affectionate, grateful, humourous and vain. ”

“ Why is it, that a very large number of highly respectable religious and educated people at home give such a ready ear and willing credence to murders and outrages which have been done on labour vessels and in sugar fields belonging to Queensland? How is it, that men in high command and office have wont only misrepresented this colony in the matter of the labour traffic? ”

“ Every railway over which I travelled, and every steamship in which I was a passenger was built by British skill and the majority with British capital—excepting the Panama railway—the greatest feat in railway construction which, up to then, had been achieved, was built by the people of the United States, aided by coolies and free negroes. ”

“ They die as willingly under the influence of a little authority as they do on a meat diet or a reduction of the temperature. They would give the world to know English, or that the English knew New Irish. Having the frailty of all human beings they are fond of sympathy and an exchange of ideas; nothing is so sweet to them as beads and a clear understanding of what is wanted from them; what they want themselves and what they are going to receive for what they are willing to part with. ”

“ As sensible men engaged in the industrial war of the world, you recruit the soldier which is most adapted to your ranks; as loyal officers of the army, you seek to prepare the soldier for the fight in the best way to insure success. In plain English, you believe that the labourer especially adapted for your garden, has been proved to be the Islander of the Islands of the Coral Sea; or better still, the Indian Coolie. In short, any of those races of mankind who can suffer the burden of the solar ray. ”

“ But that we, at this hour and period of the great industrial war, should, on our seeking to found an English colony within the tropics, have got hampered and embarrased on the question of labor, is one of those accidents in your history that cannot possibly assume a permanent influence in any shape or form. ”

“ This six days' secular slavery, revenge, money-making, and all the rest of it, is the outcome of the inhuman religion and disnatured selfishness which preside over and dictate the six days' secular work. The religion of the seventh day inculcates that you shall take no thought for the morrow; that you shall do unto others as you would that they should do unto you ”

“ In our great industrial war, there is absolutely no titles to sell or give away; no pensions are possible to imbecility; and profit or reward must be the natural fruition of effort in subordination to rational rule. ”

“ The answer is, that the religion of common sense, and common humanity which is the adopted religion of these new communities, is a reproach to the transparent hypocrises, the gorgeous impostures, and splendid shams which prevail in the old country; and the old country hates the new religion, and would, if possible, suppress it. The religion which is fast laying hold of the minds of men, is one in which Nature is reasserting her position as high priest. There is more Nature in the colonies than there is at home ”

“ Government Agents are but men, and some are notorious for being as frail as—say woman—there are ways of manipulating a Government Agent, even as there are ways of lubricating the Government appointing him, and the Government Agent has been as big a sham as any other sham ever designed to quiet the mind of a sensitive public having votes. ”

“ I had seen men and boys diving for silver sixpences on heathen coasts, but it was reserved for me to see full grown women do the like within sound of the English Church bell. Each of those women had a little baby, and I think it is right to ask if those babies are to be allowed to grow up as irresponsible as kangaroos, and to have free warren over the Australian vineyard without being compelled to take their share in dressing and keeping it? ”

“ You could, five years later, when these beings got their liberty to go idle and cut men's throats, no more get them into industrial harness than you could harness the mosquitoes. The amount of money which Peru paid for alien labour during the period of her Guano Age is simply incredible, Chili was dependent upon the Cornish miner for developing her exhaustless wealth of copper. Bolivia is still entirely dependent upon British industry and commerce for the maintainance of her civilisation. ”