THis PRINTED IMPRESSION has been carefully compared by me
with the Bill which has passed the Legislative Council and found
by me to be a true and correct copy of the said Bill.
J. L. Jog,
Clerk of Legislative Council.
Enclosure 2 in No. 6.
REPORT ON AN ORDINANCE TO AMEND THE PROTECTORATE
ORDINANCE, 1924.
This Ordinance has been the result of correspondence with the
Right Honourable the Secretary of State in whose despatch of Tth
September, 1925,* there was approved in general terms a Bill which
had been submitted and which aimed at the termination of the
status of domestic servitude persisting in the Protectorate.
2. In paragraph 4 of the Secretary of State's despatch a certain
omission from the draft Bill was sugoested, and this suggestion was
acted upon.
3. After a certain amount of discussion on the second reading
and in the Committee stage this Bill was read a second and third
time nemine contradicente.
4. A good deal of criticism of the Bill by the two Urban Elected
Creole members of the Legislative Council was directed against the
fact that no compensation was to be paid to dispossessed slave
owners. One of these members, in an impassioned speech, de-
nounced the omission to give such compensation as * iniquitous and
anrighteous,”” but it is significant that the Protectorate chief who
represents the Central Province raised no objection on this or any
other score to the Bill, but complained with some emphasis that
settlers (i.e., Creole immigrants) in the Protectorate had been
disseminating false representations as to the aims of the Govern-
ment throughout his Province.
5. The answer made by the Government was that in no instance
was there any record of compensation being paid where the abolition
of slavery was effected not at a single blow but as in this case in
the course of nature by the liberation of ante nati on their master’s
death and of post nati from their birth.
6. A further point taken by the Rural Member as to the possi-
bility of evasion by a transfer inter vivos by a dying master was
disposed of by pointing out that under Section 8 (1) of Cap. 167
any such transfer is already illegal.
7. As has been said before, in spite of the use of violent language
referred to in paragraph 4 hereof, the second and third readings were
* No. 5.