of the prohibited classes. This certificate shall be good only for a specified period. No statistics of the number of exemption certificates issued are available.

Even greater elasticity is given to the law by section 4 A, which allows the minister for external affairs to make an arrangement with the Government of any country regulating the admission to the Commonwealth of the subjects or citizens of that country whereby the subjects and citizens of that country shall not be required to pass the dictation test. The arrangement must be sanctioned by resolutions of both Houses of the Parliament.

PENALTY FOR EVASION OF THE LAW.

Section 5 of the immigration restriction act provides as follows: 1. Any immigrant who evades an officer or who enters the Commonwealth at any place where no officer is stationed may, if at any time thereafter he is found within the Commonwealth, be required to pass the dictation test, and shall if he fails to do so be deemed to be a prohibited immigrant offending against this act.

2. Any immigrant may at any time within one year after he has entered the Commonwealth be required to pass the dictation test, and shall if he fails to do so be deemed to be a prohibited immigrant offending against this act.

A prohibited immigrant offending against the act is liable to "imprisonment for not more than six months, and in addition to or substitution for such imprisonment shall be liable pursuant to any order of the minister to be deported from the Commonwealth."

REJECTION OF ARRIVING IMMIGRANTS.

The following table shows the number of immigrants admitted with or without the educational test and the number to whom admission was refused:

TABLE 10.-Persons admitted or refused admission to the Australian Commonwealth, 1902 to 1908, inclusive.

[Compiled from the Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, No. 2, 19011908, p. 1106.]

It will be seen that the proportion of immigrants to Australia to whom admission is refused is relatively small. The table next submitted compares the number of immigrants admitted and rejected in 1908 under the Australian, Canadian, and United States laws.

TABLE 11.-Total number of immigrants admitted and rejected under the Australian, Canadian, and United States laws in the year 1908. [Compiled from the Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, reports of Superintendent of Imigration, Canada, and reports of United States Commissioner General of Immigration.]

The comparatively small proportion of immigrants refused admission to Australia is due to the fact that such a large part of those who seek admission are British, and to immigrants of that nationality there is practically no bar, the immigrants to whom admission is refused being almost entirely Asiatics. The following figures for recent years indicate the nationality of the rejected immigrants and the grounds upon which the rejections were based.

TABLE 12.-Immigrants refused admission to the Commonwealth of Australia, by race, 1902 to 1907, inclusive.

[Compiled from Parliamentary Papers of Australia.]

TABLE 13.-Immigrants refused admission to the Commonwealth of Australia, by race and cause of rejection, 1902 to 1907, inclusive.a

a Not including 53 excluded in 1906, for whom data are not available.

It will be noted that the immigrants rejected were nearly all of the Asiatic races, and that of these all but two were refused admission because of failure to pass the dictation test, the exceptions noted being Hindus, both of whom were turned back because of the likelihood that they would become public charges. The latter cause also accounts for the rejection of nearly all the Europeans who failed to gain admission. During the whole period considered five persons were rejected for insanity, one for criminality, and none for disease.

CHINESE IMMIGRATION.

During the last 50 years the most vital phase of the Australian immigration situation has been the exclusion of Asiatics. The colonies have fought this immigration by entrance fees and fines, limitations of the number of passengers to a given tonnage of ships, educational tests, and absolute prohibition.

There were Chinese in Queensland as early as 1848, but the number of persons of that race in all Australia was inconsiderable up to the rush to the Victorian gold fields in 1851. The influx of Chinese at that time was the immediate cause of the adoption of a vigorous exclusion by all the colonies. In 1855 Victoria enacted a law providing that no ship should bring more than 1 Chinese to each 10 tons of its tonnage and that a shipmaster must deposit £10 with the collector of customs for each Chinaman brought. South Australia, New South Wales, and Queensland soon afterwards enacted similar legislation. Under these laws the exclusion of the Chinese became so effective that after several years they were repealed in Victoria and New South Wales.

In 1880, however, the Chinese movement again became the subject of even more drastic legislation. New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania' decreed that every Chinaman must pay an entrance tax of £10 and that a ship might bring only 1 person of that race to every 100 tons of its tonnage. Queensland in 1884 raised the entrance fee to £30 and allowed 1 to 50 tons.

These measures were only temporarily effective, and another crisis was reached in 1888, in which year the colonies conferred and agreed to adopt more stringent measures. New South Wales fixed the entrance fee for Chinese at £100 each and permitted ships to bring only 1 Chinese to each 300 tons of the tonnage. The restrictions in the other colonies were made almost equally severe. Following these enactments there was a rapid decrease in the number of Chinese immigrants. At the same time there were small beginnings of other Asiatic immigration which was considered equally as undesirable as the Chinese. The result was that in the few years preceding the federation the colonies adopted the policy of imposing upon all immigrants an educational test in a European language. This measure proved an effectual barrier to the Asiatics, and the same provision was embodied in the Commonwealth immigration restriction act of 1901, which, slightly amended, is still operative.

"Annals of the American Academy, vol. 24, p. 212.
Tasmania adopted this regulation in 1887.

CHINESE IN AUSTRALIA.

The following table shows the number of Chinese in the various Australian colonies in census years since 1861:

TABLE 14.—Number of Chinese in Australia in census years, 1861 to 1901.

[From A Statistical Account of Australia and New Zealand, 1903-4, p. 173.]

Kanakas, black laborers, recruited from the Pacific Islands, were introduced in Queensland about 1865 for the cultivation of sugar cane. As early as 1868 an attempt was made to prohibit the traffic in this class of labor, but the only measures enacted were to regulate the recruitment of laborers and contracts with them. The traffic grew and the greater part of the field work on the sugar plantations of that colony was done by the Kanakas.

In 1892 the Pacific laborers' (extension) bill was passed in Queensland, and in spite of the protests of white laborers Polynesian Kanaka laborers were again employed for the cultivation of sugar cane.

In 1901 the Commonwealth Parliament passed the Pacific Island laborers' act, which aimed to abolish the employment of Kanakas. It provided that only a limited number of Pacific Islanders should be admitted to the Commonwealth before March 31, 1904, and that after that date none would be permitted to enter. No contract could be made with those already in the Commonwealth after December 31, 1906. Any Pacific Islander found in the Commonwealth after the latter date would be liable to deportation."

To protect the sugar planters who had been the employers of this labor a tariff was put on foreign sugar; while the sugar-bounty act of 1905 and the bounties act of 1908 provided that a bounty should be paid on sugar grown or produced by white labor.

a A Statistical Account of the Seven Colonies of Australasia, 1901–2, p. 82. A Statistical Account of Australia and New Zealand, 1903-4, p. 380. CA Statistical Account of the Seven Colonies of Australasia, p. 89.

a The Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, No. 2, 1901-1908, p. 1074.