Sir J. P. Grant, governor of Jamaica, is no less emphatic in expressing his opinion that a great change for the better has taken place in the treatment of the coolie in that island also. His words are (Report for 1871): " Under the old state of things this depart ment [the immigration department] in Jamaica was in a disgmceful state, but it has now been completely reformed under the new system introduced by the new law of 1869." This law secures to the coolie full payment of day-wages at the rate fixed by law as a minimum, unless where he prefers task-work, and also regular daily rations during the whole of his five years' term of indenture, besides putting an end to all stop pages of wages at the arbitrament of only one party to the bargain. Many of the details of medical supervision are extremely creditable to the planters. The census returns for 1872 give the gross number of In inns at 7,793. Here also, as well as in Trinidad, the C. show a disposition to become settlers on the crown lands.
Some recent reports from the island of ,Mauritius are less encouraging, which is much to be deplored, because that island contains more C. than all the rest of our colonial possessions put together. Out of a total pop. of (1875) 344, 600, more than 236,000 were Indian immigrants. It would seem that the relations between employers and employed are not quite satisfactory, though here too, improvement can be noted.
Besides what may be called the legitimate traffic in Chinese C. (stopped at present), an infamous counterfeit was long carried on at Macao (q.v.). Native crimps brought thousands of their countrymen to that Portuguese island, and shipped them for Cuba and Peru. This " involuntary emigration," as it has been called, began in 1848, and as many as 13,000 persons were shipped in the course of a year; but as in reality it was nothing more than an elaborate system of kidnapping, the Chinese and British governments, in 1872, prohibited any vessel suspected of being engaged in this trade, from fitting out in any Chinese or British port, and the "trade" was practically destroyed in consequence. At the close of 1S73, the Portuguese government formally declared the "exportation" of C. illegal, and the atrocious traffic may now be considered at an end.
Similar to the coolie immigration, though the laborers are not called C., is the importation of Polynesian natives into Queensland to work on the sugar plantations, and into the Fiji islands. By laws of 1868 and 1875, the imperial parliament has secured the rights of a helpless but industrious race. See In Quest of Coolies, by J. L. A. Hope, 1872.