Sir, our position is very precarious, and we will need your active support, which has been so liberally given to us till now, yet for a long time to come. The Immigration Law Amendment Bill, which you and your contemporaries condemned last year in such forcible language, has received the Royal assent, as appears from the papers received this week. This Bill was, at the time it was passed, unanimously pronounced to be an iniquitous measure. Even the Natal papers were doubtful whether the Bill would receive the Royal sanction. Yet the Bill has been promulgated and it came into force on the 8th August.
Publicity is our best and perhaps the only weapon of defence.
Our grievances, says one of our sympathizers, are so serious that they have only to be known in order to be removed. I have now to beseech you and your contemporaries to express your opinion with regard to this action on the part of the Colonial Secretary. The Colonial Office, we thought, was our safe resting-place. We may yet have to be undeceived. We have prayed for suspension of State-aided immigration to Natal if the Bill could not be vetoed.