Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers

of crime connected with the enticing, detaining, buying and selling of children. Governor Hennessy, in reporting the remarks made by the Chief Justic

ir Joh

very in this Colony has grown up has called into existence a greatly increasing traffic, especially in women and children. The number of Chinamen in this Colony has increased and is increasing rapidly, whilst their great increase in wealth has fostered licentious habits, notably in buying women for purposes sanctioned neither by the laws nor customs on the mainland. I hold in my hand a placard in Chinese, torn down from the wall of the Central School, Cough Street steps, in this city. The translation appears at length in the Hong Kong Daily Press of August 15th, 1879. The purport of that translation is shortly that the advertiser, one Cheong, has lost a purchased slave girl named Tai Ho, aged 13 years. After a full description of the girl a reward is offered in these terms:-'If there is in either of the four quarters any worthy man who knows where she is gone to, and will send a letter, he will be rewarded with

mild, and it is said to be the opinion of a gentleman of great experience in Chinese, that, as it exists here, it is not contrary to the Christian religion, and that it is as general a fashion for Chinese ladies in Hong Kong to purchase one or more girls to attend on them as it is for English ladies to hire ladies' maids, and that the custom is so general that it would be highly impolitic, if not impossible, to put down the system. It may be that slavery as it exists in the houses of the better classes in Hong Kong is mild, and that custom among the better classes renders servitude to them a boon as long as it lasts. It is, I believe, an admitted duty that when the young girl grows up and becomes marriageable she is married; but then it is the custom that

quote it all. Referring to the purchase of kidnaped children from the kidnapers by well-to-do Chinese residents

y inquiry to verify the patent lies of the vendors. I have reason to believe that H.E. the Governor was desirous that my request should, if proper, be complied with; but on reference to former cases it appeared that a former Attorney-General had found that the sy

took the responsibility to direct the Acting Attorney General to prose

unnecessary for me to trace how it became the Common Law of England that whosoever breathes the air of England cannot be a slave." After reference to notable decisions on the part of England's highest authorities as to the unlawfulness of slavery; to the claim that slavery was secured to the Chinese residents by the promise not to inte

mainly in our ignorance of the extent of the evil. What is our duty, now that we know that slavery in its worst as in its best form exists in this dot in the ocean to the extent of say 10,000 slaves,-a numb

ng the Attorney General to prosecute these cases, and answers some of the objections raised by the latter officer, concluding this portion of his remarks with the words: "What I have said has been said to meet arg

idnaping or detaining children with intent to sell them into slave

Sir John Smale wr

schools in this Colony, without counting beautiful children by the hundred whose Eurasian origin is self-declared. If the Government would inquire into the present condition of these classes, and still more, into what has become of these women and their children of the past, I believe that it will be found that in the great majority of cases the women have sunk into misery, and that of the children the girls that have survived have been sold to the profession of their mothers, and that, if boys, they have been lost sight of or have sunk into the condition of the mean whit

seem in later years, by rentin

wn failure also to induce the Attorney General to prosecute cases to which His Excellency had called his attention, an